Northwestern
by kriskringle
Summary: AU. What if Will recognized MacKenzie in the audience that day? What if they ran into each other afterward? An edited, expanded version of a work originally written (and either posted or abandoned) in 2014.
1. Chapter 1

_Christ, what a debacle._

The words "hackneyed," "predictable" and "idiotic" come to mind but there's no need for him to weigh in: Sharon the liberal and her conservative counterpart are content to fill the vacuum with well-worn sound bites.

Jesus, his head hurts.

He squints, rubs his forehead and scans the sea of faces in front of him, trying to distract himself from the pain. He's always been a people-watcher: being able to predict John McAvoy's moods had paid rich dividends.

The crowd is mostly what he expects—young-ish, some well on their way to becoming grooving hipsters, completely unaware of the meta factor that comes with trying to be hip: after all, there are only so many "alternative" styles one can adopt before becoming a cliché.

Somebody in his peripheral vision—some feminine form way off in the back of the audience—captures his attention. As he squints at the back row, trying to make out her features, something about the way she's holding her head—half-cocked, yet defiant—seems familiar. He can't quite put his finger on it so he squints harder.

It's only when she shakes her head—in exasperation, maybe—that his heart fucking stops.

 _Is that_ —?

Her face is shrouded in darkness but there's something about her form—feminine curves offset by squared shoulders—that makes him think that it _is_.

 _Fuck._

As if on cue, a technician adjusts the stage lights and for a second, her face is thrown into relief.

If he wasn't absolutely certain he was bat-shit crazy, he'd swear it's _MacKenzie's_ eyes staring back at him, _MacKenzie's_ face, with her big eyes and resolute stare, shining like a beacon in the darkness.

This isn't the first time he's imagined seeing her in a crowd, but it's the first time his body has reacted so viscerally.

For a split second, the pounding in his head subsides long enough for his mind to start chanting, _it's her, it's her, it's her_.

The surf (the inane babble on either side of him) which had been crashing in, disappears and for a moment the ocean he's standing in seems eerily calm: _MacKenzie_ , with her brown hair shining under the lights, her hazel eyes bright and discerning, is staring back at him.

A moment later she disappears, morphed into someone who looks eerily like her.

When she reappears a powerful wave washes over him, completely pulling him under.

 _Is it her? Could it be her?_

It's not until she's out of focus again that he's able to fight his way to the surface—just in time to notice the moderator has asked him a direct question.

A pat answer seems to suffice, so he quickly turns his attention back to the crowd.

Off to his right, some whisp of a girl stands up to speak.

Though it registers that she's asked perhaps the most moronic question of the afternoon ("What makes America the greatest country in the world?"), he's not really paying attention because he's looking for landmarks in the crowd, trying to figure out where the fuck "MacKenzie" is.

He barely notices the idiots on either side of him spouting pat, moronic answers and it's only when he hears his own name that he realizes the moderator is asking him to weigh in.

 _Shit._ "Freedom and freedom," he says carelessly and hopes it's enough.

At that moment, MacKenzie reappears with a look on her face he knows all too well. It's the one that used to irritate the crap out of him, the one urging him to rise above his natural inclination to take the easy way out.

 _Come on, Billy, you can do better than that._

And then he imagines (he really must be losing it) that she's holding up a fucking _sign_ ("It's not").

He keeps staring, instinctively waiting for further direction and when it comes ("But it can be"), he finds himself unleashing a torrent of vitriol.

The rest is history.

Fifteen minutes later he stumbles out of the auditorium, blinded by flashbulbs and an apparently overactive imagination.

 _Could it have been her?_

He has no idea what the fuck came out of his mouth back there because the only word on his mind is MacKenzie.

Sharon the liberal is saying something to him—unflattering, no doubt—but he can't hear her. He's heading for the exit, pushing through the double doors into the hallway, some sixth sense propelling him in that direction.

If by some miracle it _was_ her, and he _does_ happen to find her, what the hell is he going to say to her?

He's spent the last three years berating himself for being so weak, for seeing her—for _wanting_ to see her—in every crowd.

Where is that resolve now?

He has no idea—his body is in charge—and all _it_ cares about is whether it was _her_.

A clutch of students crowds around him but he ignores them, looking around, searching, until the lizard part of his brain kicks in and all the hair on the back of his neck stands up.

He whirls around and there she is, walking away.

He'd know the curve of that back anywhere because it's seared into his brain.

His body tells him this is not his imagination, it's a lock, this is _her_ , and before he can stop himself, he's bellowing her name.

"MacKenzie!"

The word is wrenched from his throat—desperate and bawling. It echoes off the wallpaper-covered walls of the 100-year old building, eliciting murmurs of surprise from the crowd.

They follow his gaze to where she's standing—frozen—her heart hammering in her chest.

 _He's seen me. He's ten feet away from me and he's calling my name._

Slowly, slowly, she turns to face him and when she finally raises her eyes to his, time crashes to a halt and all he can hear is the blood rushing in his ears.

It's _her._ A flash of unalloyed joy surges through him that's quickly supplanted by regret and anger, and then he's choking out, "You."

Reading his lips, she nods and slowly picks her way toward him.

The crowd parts for her, understanding somehow this has nothing to do with them, and now she's standing six inches away from him, clutching a binder to her chest and shyly tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

Her eyes never leave his face and he can't stop staring, let alone open his mouth to form words.

 _She is so, so beautiful._

"Hello, Will," she says finally, and her voice is a balm coating his jangled nerves, bathing them in warmth.

"It's good to see you."


	2. Chapter 2

The spell broken, people start pestering him, thrusting pens and pieces of paper at him, but he can't move because he can't breathe.

The last words he'd spoken to her flash in his brain.

She'd stood there, sobbing, begging him to listen, begging him to believe her when she told him the affair was over and that she loved him, only him.

 _Please don't throw what we have away, Billy, please._

 _You need to leave. Don't call me. Don't email me. I never want to see your face or hear your voice again._

She'd begged and she'd pleaded but he'd refused to listen, turning his back on her and telling her over his shoulder that she needed to clear her shit out and that she'd better not be there when he got back.

He'd headed straight to a bar and gulped down seven shots of whiskey in quick succession, forcing himself to inhale after each draught (the polar opposite of what Steve, his lanky, pimply-faced older cousin had instructed him to do at age thirteen when he'd introduced him to hard liquor: _"Breathe in_ — _drink_ — _breathe out. Come on, Willie, don't be such a pussy."_ )

Now, 35 years later, the harsh vapor from the glass filling his nostrils is a welcome distraction from his thoughts, which fill him with shame.

 _What did he do for her that I didn't? Did he make love to her better? Taste better? Make fewer sarcastic, ill-timed jokes_?

Suddenly, everything he _is_ feels wrong, every aspect of himself is something he wants to peel off and throw on the floor behind him, and the ignorant person he was before, the one blissfully unaware of everything happening behind his back is suddenly both pathetic and enviable. He cringes, imagining all of the things that were happening when he wasn't paying attention. At the same time, he wishes he could return to a moment where not knowing was a possibility, to being the blissfully ignorant person who didn't know what was happening behind his back. But that person just wasn't good enough to have her love. Just like he'd never been good enough to have his father's love. How could he ever have thought it would be different with her? With anyone?

He sits there, awash in shame and self-loathing, winding and rewinding the movie reel of their life together, trying to see where he'd gone wrong.

 _Why wasn't I good enough?_

Suddenly, he's overcome by a wave of nausea so strong it chokes him. He pushes his stool back and heads for the back of the bar, stumbling as he rounds the corner into the hallway.

As he feels himself going down, he falls as he was taught to do in high school: _knees, hips, shoulder._

Then he gets to his feet, shoves the door to the men's room open and shambles inside, where he expels the contents of his stomach into the toilet bowl. Sweat is beading on his forehead and he grips the metal bars on either side of the stall so hard his fingers ache.

He shakily gets to his feet and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, a single thought crowding out all others:

 _She never loved me_ — _it was all a lie._ He wants to weep.

Later, he walks the six blocks back to his apartment, trying to decide whether it would be worse to open the door and find her there or find her gone.

The streets are uncharacteristically empty for this time of night and as he walks the last block home, shoulders slumped and hands dug deep in his pockets, he angrily wipes the tears from his eyes.

When she hears the key turn in the lock, she slowly gets to her feet and stands, heart pounding. The fact is, even though she's spent the last three hours trying to work out how the fuck she's going to convince him that _of course_ , he can trust her—she's finished with all that pesky lying, honest!—there's really no plausible explanation for sleeping with Brian that would make forgiveness possible.

She wouldn't trust _him_ if the roles were reversed. But she has to try, so she waits.

When he steps into the foyer and sees her standing there—eyes swollen and red with tears—he's overwhelmed with rage.

 _How could you do it? How COULD you?_

He would never, ever raise a hand to her but the urge to lash out at her—at anyone, to release the rage that's making his head pound and his eyes ache—is more powerful than he's felt in years. Not since he was a kid staring John McAvoy down has he wanted to hit something as badly as he wants to hit something now. He wants to break all the furniture into pieces, smash every bit of glass in the kitchen and sweep all the appliances onto the floor.

 _You never loved me. It was all a lie._

But one thing Will McAvoy learned at an early age was how to put a padlock on his feelings so he does that now and forces the pain from his eyes, forces his features into something steely and inscrutable.

His lips are pressed into a thin line, his fingers clenched into fists and his breath carries the smell of whiskey to her six feet away.

She doesn't know what he's thinking but it feels like he's a bomb ready to detonate. Still, she's never once been afraid of him and she isn't now, so slowly, tentatively, she takes a step toward him, hands outstretched, palms pressing against an invisible barrier as she moves toward him.

He doesn't move, only shakes his head in warning. It's only years of conditioning that keep him from screaming at her to stay the fuck away from him.

She stops three feet away, not daring to go any further. She's not afraid of him exactly, she doesn't think he'd ever hurt her, but in the space of three hours she's gone from enjoying her own personal real estate in Will McAvoy's arms to feeling like a complete stranger to him.

It kills her to see him in so much pain, doubly so knowing she was the cause, so she tries to tell him something of why she's still standing there, why she didn't do as he asked and leave.

"I can't let you give up on us, Will," she says quietly, but he only snorts in derision.

 _Where do you get off thinking you have a choice in the matter? You're the one who burned the whole fucking house down._

"Get out," he says sharply. His voice is colder than she's ever heard it and the tenor of it—filled with barely concealed rage—fills her veins with ice.

"I can't."

She's telling the truth. Although she knows the honorable thing to do is to go, to let him decide his own future, she can't take that chance: she knows as well as she's standing here that if she steps foot outside his apartment he'll close the door on her—on them—forever.

"You're a cheating, lying whore, MacKenzie, and I never knew you at all. Get out."


	3. Chapter 3

Stunned, she inches her way back to the couch, drops down and buries her face in her hands. She knows what he's doing, that he's trying to cross a line they can never get back over and then he's beside her, grabbing her forearms with both hands and yanking her towards the door.

He doesn't hurt her but she's no match for his strength, so she does the only thing she can do: she sinks to her knees.

And then he's lifting her, carrying her to the door and she's wrapping her legs around his waist and clinging on, refusing to let go, burying her face in his neck. The smell of whiskey through his skin is strong enough to make her nauseous on an empty stomach but she clings more tightly to him as he wrenches the door open with one hand.

He carries her into the hallway, peels her arms off his shoulders and sets her down roughly before bolting back inside and slamming the door in her face. Suddenly the door opens again and her shoes and purse whiz past her head. Then the door slams shut. She hears the deadbolt turn and then there is silence.

He stands on the other side of the door, breathing heavily, fighting against the urge to open it, to gather her into his arms, to believe her sorry excuses.

It's midnight. She picks up her shoes and purse, props herself against the wall outside his door and feels her knees give way. As she slides down, she lets the tears fall once more.

 _Oh God, what have I done? This can't be the end – please, please, don't let this be the end._

How can she make him understand that what she'd done then had nothing to do with how she feels about him now but how she'd felt about him then – and still more to do with how she'd felt about herself, which was completely unworthy of his brand of devotion? Too ashamed to admit the intensity of his feelings had scared the shit out of her, she'd tried to sort it out on her own.

And then, one night, after it was all over with Brian, after weeks of avoiding Brian's phone calls, something had shifted. Will had looked at her, those blue eyes bathing her in warmth, and her stomach turned a somersault. He was a man, not a boy, and she loved _him_. It was the moment she let her guard down and it was the moment she fell in love with him. She hadn't looked back until she started getting the feeling he was thinking about marriage.

She was thrilled, sure of what her answer would be, but she needed for them to start out on the right foot. She had to tell him. And so she had. And now everything had gone to hell.

She hugs her knees to her chest and looks down at her purse, where the key to his apartment lays tucked in the front pocket. Does she dare use it? No. She'll wait for him. She lays her head down and catnaps throughout the night, her head jerking up at every noise.

Six hours later, as she knows he will, he opens the door to go downstairs to get the newspapers. It's clear he hasn't slept a wink and his puffy eyes and damp cheeks indicate he's only recently stopped crying. When he sees her sitting there, exhausted and with puffy eyes, he's momentarily touched by her resolve - until he remembers what she's done.

 _How could she do it? How could she let me shower her with love and affection, openly act like the besotted fool I was at the same time she was seeing someone else? She must have been laughing at me for months – how often has she secretly mocked me for being so gullible, so naïve?_

 _She never loved me. It was all a lie_.

He swallows the acid reflux in his throat and accepts the newspapers she holds in her outstretched hand. The fact that they're untouched says something about her despair – tussling over who gets first crack at the Times is ordinarily the first order of business.

He begins to close the door but before he can slam it shut, she wedges her bare foot between the door and the jamb.

He sighs and then says hoarsely, "Go home, MacKenzie."

His voice is low and raspy from a night spent smoking too many cigarettes, only allowing himself to stub them out once his fingertips were singed.

"I can't. Please - not until you hear me out."

"I don't want to hear you out. You need to resign – or I will – but one of us has to go."

"I'll go. I'll resign. But not until you hear what I have to say."

"I don't give two fucks what you have to say, MacKenzie. It's over," he says, and he hates himself because he knows he's trying to convince himself as much as her.

"Please," she says, and for a moment he forgets what she's done. He loves her, dammit (well, the "her" he thought she was) and it infuriates him. It's enough to make him hesitate and before he can respond she's shoving her way past him and back into the apartment.

He rolls his eyes, shuts the door and turns to face her.

She can tell from his expression that there is very little room for error and very little chance of changing his mind, but she has to try.

And so she begins, forcing herself to look into his eyes, to witness the devastation she's wrought.

 _How the fuck had she forgotten that the thing about confessions is that once they're out of your head and into someone else's you can't control their interpretation? She knows she loves him, that what happened with Brian isn't a reflection of how she feels about Will now, but in Will's mind it's all of a piece: she'd cheated on him because she didn't love him then and she doesn't love him now._

She has to make him understand.

"You told me once you were in love with me from the first moment you saw me," she starts and then stops. She takes a deep breath, trying to tamp down the growing hysteria inside her.

"You said you took one look at me and you were hooked. Full stop. No doubts."

"Obviously, I was a fool," he says flatly.

She swallows hard. There's nothing in his expression that reveals how much he loves her - all she sees is the rage, devastating in its intensity.

"How you felt about me then - well, that's exactly how I feel about you now. But that wasn't true at the beginning, so when he called I went out with him. You and I hadn't discussed being exclusive - "

He puts a hand up to stop her, his blue eyes gleaming with contempt.


	4. Chapter 4

"Don't you dare try to tell me you thought I'd be okay with you seeing other people, MacKenzie," he hisses. "You knew I wouldn't."

"You're right – I knew you wouldn't – which is why I didn't tell you. I was still hung up on him because he'd rejected me and honestly, I wasn't sure how I felt about you. So for a few months, I was seeing both of you."

" _Fucking_ both of us, you mean. You were _fucking_ both of us. And, by the way, did you use a condom with him or do I need to be checked for STDs?"

"We used condoms. I wouldn't have put you at risk."

"So you drew the line there. Very considerate of you."

She swallows hard and goes on.

"After a little while, I realized I was hanging on to him because he was familiar. The truth is, you made me see things – made me feel things – and it scared me. You're a man and he's a boy. The stakes were always going to be higher with you. I realized I needed to grow up and that if I wanted a real relationship, I needed to stop being afraid of being a grown-up. I'm in my thirties but until two years ago I had the emotional maturity of an adolescent. You made me grow up, Will, and I fell in love with you. And when I did, it was deeper, richer, more exhilarating than anything I've ever known. I realized that you're the man I want to spend the rest of my life with, so I broke it off with him. I love you, Will. So much. You have to believe me. I love you.'

He hates hearing this story, hates hearing that she's anything less than the woman he'd put on a pedestal, the amazing, perfect woman he'd fallen in love with because not only does it mean he can't trust her, it means he can't trust himself - can't trust his own judgment: if she could do this – well, then he never knew her at all. Not for one second would he have ever believed she was capable of this. Not her. Not his MacKenzie – not the love of his life.

"Did it ever occur to you – even _once_ \- to let me know that you weren't sure about us? That I was just a trial subscription?" he says hoarsely, eyes full of pain.

Then the rage is back.

"We're not talking about a one-night stand, MacKenzie. That – maybe that – I could try to understand. But not - not –" He stops, tries again. Tries to find the words to convey just how deeply she's betrayed him.

"You lied to me for _four_ months straight - you looked me in the eye and told me you loved me while you were screwing another man." He shakes his head incredulously. "If you think I am _ever_ going to get past that you're out of your fucking mind."

"I never told you I loved you while I was seeing him," she says reflexively. "I didn't. I wouldn't lie about that."

She regrets it the moment the words are out of her mouth.

"Oh, you wouldn't lie about that," he parrots her. "You'd lie about anything else but not that. You're _principled_ about your lies."

"You told me you loved me early on but I didn't say it back until after I stopped seeing him," she says defensively, unwilling to cede her point, even though she knows she's just made a huge tactical error.

 _Fuck._

Okay, so maybe she's telling the truth about that. He'd felt something was holding her back for the first little while, that his admittedly over-the-top gifts had made her uncomfortable, but he'd chalked that up to her wanting to leave a privileged upbringing behind. It never occurred to him it was because she was fucking someone else on the side.

He can't stand to look at her (well, can't afford to look at her, really, because if he does he's afraid he'll start believing her lies) but he has to make her see how truly fucked up she is because it's obvious she still doesn't get it.

He takes a step toward her, fists clenched, studying her like she's a bug on a pin. The hysteria coils low in her belly but she doesn't try to back away from him; instead, she stands her ground, all the while fighting the urge to lean into him, to force her body into the spot where she belongs.

"It's all about you, isn't it?" he says in wonder, dropping his hands to his side.

He snorts, a low, mirthless sound that comes as it finally hits him: what he thinks, what he feels, never mattered to her because to her, he's just an object - a place to hang her coat for a while.

" _You_ weren't sure about us, so _you_ decided to see someone behind my back, to not have an honest conversation about it. Then _you_ decided it was time to tell me about it. _You_ decided you'd stay out in the fucking hallway last night and then _you_ decided you'd leave only after I hear you out. What I feel or think doesn't even enter into it – I'm just a prop in your play."

"Will – "

"Fuck you, MacKenzie. Fuck you. You're not my puppet master and I deserve better. Either you resign or I will."

"I will. I'll resign."

"Fine. You said your piece. Now get out. I never want to see you again."

"Will – "

"Get out."

She has two choices. She can do as he asks or stand her ground. She tells herself it's not just for her sake that she wants to fight for this. She knows she makes him happy; she can (or could, until last night) see it in his eyes whenever he looked at her. Charlie and Will's sister had both told her they'd never seen Will so content, so light, so relaxed, so full of joy as when he was with her.

What she has with him is real. Maybe it wasn't in the beginning but it is now and she has to make him see that, so she takes a step toward him. Raises her hand to his cheek and cups it gently.

He stands there, breathing heavily, trying not to lean into her touch.

It doesn't matter if it's all been a lie. She's everything to him – she'd introduced him to a part of himself he hadn't known existed, brought him to fever pitches with her touch, made him feel loved as he had never felt loved before. After experiencing all that, how the fuck is he supposed to live without her?


	5. Chapter 5

She can see the emotions play across his face, the confusion in his eyes. She has to convince him of what she knows to be true. She loves him. She's loved him for the last two years. Since the moment she fell in love with him she's been all in, right there with him and that's every bit as true as the fact that she'd cheated on him in the first place.

She can't let the latter outweigh the former in his head.

"100% of what we have now is real, Billy. Maybe it was only 95% in the beginning but it's been 100% for the last two years," she says softly, as if reading his mind.

"So fucking your ex-boyfriend behind my back only counts as 5%? That's rich."

"You're right. I did that. And then I fell in love with you - completely, head-over-heels in love with you. And that's where I am right now. I love you, Will," she says desperately, her voice breaking, and then the words are tumbling out, one after the other, propelled by despair, by the expression on his face that tells her it may well be too late.

"I didn't then – not at first – not because you weren't absolutely wonderful but because he'd rejected me and I was hung up on him because of that. I couldn't see you for the man you are, Will – I couldn't see anything. All I could see were my insecurities, which were telling me that a man like you couldn't possibly be in love with a reject like me, and if you thought you were, it was only a matter of time before you got to know me and rejected me, too. But I _love_ you, Billy. _So much_. You _have_ to believe me. What can I do? Tell me how to fix this. _Please_."

The tears are rolling down her cheeks again and she swipes them away, reaches for his hand and grabs it tightly.

He closes his eyes. He doesn't want to hear this because he doesn't want to believe her. And he can feel himself starting to because he wants to because he wants to get back to being in love with her. Can he believe her? Should he believe her?

She's looking at him with those liquid eyes filled with tears and she certainly looks sincere (though if he casts back to those first four months he thought she looked sincere then, too).

What should he do? God, he wants to tell her to get the fuck out, to decimate her, but he also wants their life back, their future back.

He wants to believe she's telling the truth because she's the love of his life and he needs her more than he's ever needed anyone. If she's telling the truth, he can have what he needs. If he chooses to believe her, maybe they can fix this.

Then his ego reminds him to think about his self-respect.

 _She turned you into a cuckold. Are you really going to let her get away with it?_

He can't. He won't.

"You make me sick, MacKenzie," he says, his voice hard and betraying none of the regret and uncertainty that's making his eyes sting and his throat close.

But it doesn't matter. Not anymore. He has to finish it.

"I can't stand to look at you," he says.

She blinks. Recoils as if he's just slapped her.

"Get. Out. Now." he says slowly, consonants cold and clipped, hard pauses between the words.

That does it. She nods, swallows hard, turns on her heel and walks out.

He watches her go, slams the door and heads straight to his broom closet where he gets two garbage bags and sets to work ridding his apartment of any traces of her.

When she gets home, she faxes her resignation to Charlie – effective immediately – and supplies him with the names of a few people who can sub for her until he finds a replacement. Charlie phones her immediately, asking what the hell happened but she only tells him she and Will have broken up and that they've decided one of them needs to resign. Charlie tries to talk her out of it, but she's resolute. She goes to the office, packs her things and leaves the key to Will's apartment on his desk.

Three weeks later, Charlie tells him she's going to Afghanistan. He spends a sleepless night fighting the urge to call her, to beg her not to go. How dare she put her life in danger? How dare she deprive him of the opportunity to run into her, to pretend he doesn't care?

 _She's_ the one who fucked up - why is he the one forced to spend 12 hours a day in a newsroom in which everything reminds him of her, where the staff stare at him pityingly when they think he's not looking?

It doesn't matter, he tells himself. He's survived worse than this.

He lets her go.


	6. Chapter 6

MacKenzie grows up over the next three years. She takes a long, hard look at herself and finally understands where she'd gone wrong. He'd been right. When she'd cheated on him, it _had_ been all about her.

She does her best not to think about Will McAvoy but he's like a phantom limb. She misses him every day, aches for him, berates herself for the pain she'd caused him. Thoughts of him rise up, unbidden, and she forces herself to quash them down.

Until one morning, when she's been back in the States for six months, unable to get a job, a Google alert tells her he's speaking at Northwestern. She hesitates but a moment before getting out her credit card and booking a plane ticket. She needs to see him. Maybe if she does, she can unearth the taproot of her feelings for him, and finally be free of him.

It doesn't work out that way. She takes one look at him across the sea of people in front of her and her heart starts racing triple time. And when he finally looks in her direction, looks into her eyes, his gaze is as sharp, knowing and piercing as it ever was.

She's nearly undone by the connection that still pulses between them.

Then her professional brain kicks in and she starts producing, writing the words on a thick pad of sketch paper. She's grateful she's still got the massive black marker in her purse - the one she'd used to label the cardboard boxes of tapes she'd lugged from Afghanistan.

When his tirade is over, she files out of the auditorium, trying to gather the courage to go and find him, to see if the thing she'd felt when they'd locked eyes was only one-sided. But then she stops herself. Is she doing it again?

She'd made the decision to turn up, to flash those signs. Doesn't she owe it to him to let him decide if he wants to leave her – leave them - in the past? She turns away, heads for the exit, telling herself she'll leave it up to him.

He'd seen her – she's sure of it. He can find her if he wants to. She has to let it be. For his sake, she has to let it be.

But now he's called her over. And she's standing in front of him, unsure of what to say, how to bridge the distance between them.

For the past three years, he's told himself (commanded himself, really) that he never wants to see her again, that the woman he'd fallen in love with was a pipedream – a figment of his imagination who doesn't exist and never did. And now here she is, standing in front of him, looking as beautiful as ever - if a little too thin, a little too exhausted - but here she is, his MacKenzie.

He's not sure what he wants to say, exactly, but he needs to talk to her. Alone. But where? He feels around behind him, grasps a doorknob in his hand and turns it, delighted to discover it's unlocked.

When he sees the room is empty, he leads her into it without saying a word, then locks the door.

He doesn't know what the fuck is happening, has no plan except that his body seems to be in charge and he can't let her get away.

"Why are you here?" he asks, and she shrugs, worries her bottom lip a little before looking up at him.

 _Jesus, that face._

He's having a hard time pretending he doesn't care.

"I came – " she begins, and then stops. "I wanted – " but he's staring at her and she doesn't know what he's thinking, and what can she say, really, that doesn't sound idiotic or, worse, reveal the fact that she's still hopelessly, helplessly in love with him.

"I didn't think you'd see me," she says softly.

"Really? With those signs?"

"Oh - that?"

She gives a hollow laugh. "I was just producing."

He snorts.

She looks at him then, her natural fortitude back.

"Why did you bring me into this classroom?"

He swallows hard.

"I saw you – in the audience – I thought -"

He clears his throat. "I saw you and I wanted – "

And then he shrugs sheepishly.

"I don't know what I wanted. Maybe I didn't want you to leave without saying hello."

He forces the words to sound lighthearted - as if saying "hello" is all he wants from her.

She blinks, and he thinks maybe she's disappointed.

"Well, hello. I should go," she says briskly and the tide recedes, exposing the remains of his broken heart - bits of detritus in the sand.

"Wait - what?"

"My plane leaves in a few hours," she tells him. "I have to go back to the hotel first – to pack - and well – you know."

She hopes she sounds chipper and not devastated.

Coming here was a mistake. She needs to focus – make her hands work so she can unlock the door and get out of here. Then she can dissolve into tears. He can't know what he's done to her – what being so close to him again has done to her. He can't know that the ache emanating from deep within her body – a longing for the past, for the right to be able to touch him again – is choking her.

"Oh – okay."

He nods, his mind working overtime and before he can stop himself he's smiling in what he hopes is a winning way and wondering aloud, "Can't you take a later flight? I mean – you just got here."

Sweet. A flicker of hope. She looks at him in surprise and shakes, no – jerks – her head. Forces herself to remember he's just being polite.

"No – I have to get this flight if I want to be there by 9:00 tomorrow morning."

He takes a step toward her. Her mouth is dry and she swallows hard, trying to focus.

"Where – why – why do you have to be there at 9?"

"Interview – London. I already rescheduled it once."

Yes, yes, I'm sorry – I understand – can't be helped – family emergency. I look forward to meeting you.

He doesn't need to know why - that she'd done it as soon as she'd booked her ticket to Chicago.

"For a story?" he says, and now he's two feet away from her. She's staring at his chest and that's a good thing because at least she has somewhere to look besides his face.

She shakes her head, again swallows hard. "Job – BBC."

Apparently, Charlie Skinner's friends don't care about her PTSD, that she only made it back from Afghanistan with half her marbles.

He takes another step toward her and she can smell his soap. He's practically on top of her now and she clenches her fingers into fists to keep them from darting out and pulling him against her.

"Is that where you're living now?"

She shakes her head. "DC."

She can tell he's fighting some internal battle, trying to decide which one of them will lose, which one will win.

"Oh – okay – well, it was… good to see you," he says awkwardly, the flame of his desire petering out, drowned by inertia. He's suddenly exhausted.

She loses.

Quickly, she turns the handle, opens the door, and then she's gone.


	7. Chapter 7

He stands there stupidly for a moment, stunned.

 _What the fuck is he doing?_

The knowledge that he's just allowed his future happiness to walk out the door spurs him into action and suddenly he's flinging the door open so hard it slams into the wall. Then he's racing down the hallway, calling after her.

'MacKenzie!" he shouts, and once again, the crowd stares at him in wonder.

She stops, turns around to face him and he sees that her eyes are red-rimmed and filled with tears.

"MacKenzie –" he says, and starts walking towards her.

She wipes her eyes angrily and tries to smile, all the while fighting an overwhelming urge to turn around and run.

Everything she feels for him is just below the surface and she doesn't know how long she'll be able to tamp it down. If she doesn't leave now, she's going to dissolve into a bawling, sobbing mess.

"Will," she pleads. " _Please_."

 _Why is he torturing her? What does he want from her?_

"Wait," he says impulsively, grabbing her hand. He's on autopilot now, acting purely on instinct. If he lets her go now, will he ever see her again? Will he ever have this chance again?

 _Chance for what, you idiot? What the fuck do you think you're doing? She cheated on you. Fucked another man while she was with you. Lied about it for four months. Are you really going to let her off the hook?_

God, he hates that voice. The sneering, all-knowing voice in his head that keeps him safe, the one that makes him react with sarcasm and cold condescension to every perceived slight. He hates it because it dominates every other voice in his head, crowds out all the other voices that are trying to get his attention, like the ones whispering that maybe she was telling the truth, that maybe she did love him as much as he loved her, maybe he doesn't have to be alone for the rest of his life, that maybe forgiving her doesn't mean he's a sad, cuckolded sack.

He knows what he wants, goddammit. Despite everything that's happened between them, he wants _her_ and she's standing right there. For the first time in three years, she's standing right there.

He doesn't know what he's doing, has no plan: all he knows is that he can't let her walk out of his life again.

"MacKenzie," he says again.

She looks into his eyes and is startled by what she sees. She knows her sudden appearance has caught him off-guard, that his mind is working overtime trying to figure out what the fuck he's doing, and because of that, all shields are down. The way he's looking at her now is nothing like the last image she has of him, the one she carries around in her head, of the cold, condescending man who'd ejected her from his life. This is the Will she knew, the man she fell in love with.

Suddenly, the throngs of people are back, crowding around them.

He glances up and realizes his idiotic tirade has unleashed the hounds of hell. If he wants to talk to MacKenzie, they need to get away from here. Now.

He's got a microphone stuck in his face, wielded by some asshat lacking sufficient powers of observation to understand this isn't a good time.

"Will – can we ask you some questions? You raised some –"

'Not now," Will barks. Then, to MacKenzie: "I have to get out of here. Will you come with me?"

"Where?" she says. She has no idea what he's offering now. Friendship?

His mind works quickly. "My hotel."

He sees her hesitate, "Will, I told you – I have to get back – "

The cacophony surrounding them is growing, more microphones being stuck in his face.

"No comment," he barks, never taking his eyes off MacKenzie.

Will's handler appears beside him, clearly relieved to have located his charge.

"Mr. McAvoy – we have to – "

"Please," Will says to MacKenzie, almost pleading. "Just for a few minutes. A car can take you back to your hotel. You'll have time to pack."

He vaguely realizes that what he's just said has been caught on tape, and he hopes to Christ no one realizes that this is the EP who screwed him over. Their breakup had been all over the tabloids when it happened because Brian fucking Brenner had leaked her infidelity to the press.

"Alright," she says quickly, recognizing the danger they're in.

"Where's the car?" he says to his handler.

"This way, Mr. McAvoy."

Tugging MacKenzie by the hand, he fights the crowd surging around him. "Come on," he says to her over his shoulder.

"MacKenzie!" a reporter calls out.

 _Shit._

"Are you two back together?" someone else calls out.

The air around them crackles with excitement as suddenly, every reporter in the vicinity recognizes what they've stumbled upon.

 _It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter_ , Will tells himself, fighting through the clutch of reporters. He keeps his head down, his only focus on getting to the car.

MacKenzie can feel a panic attack coming on.

 _I've done it again – ruined it again._

 _This will be all over the news and he's going to be humiliated. Again. Oh God, why can't I stop hurting this man?_

And then, _Shit – there goes my interview. "Family emergency," my ass. The BBC will get hold of this, for sure._

She pushes the thought away and keeps her head down as she walks as fast as she can, trying to keep up with Will's long strides as they pick their way through the crowd.

Suddenly, Will trips over a reporter's feet. He is forced to let go of her hand and she finds herself marooned in a sea of reporters who want a piece of her. Seven microphones are thrust in her face but her lungs aren't working well enough to respond. They aren't working well enough to do anything because she's in the middle of a full-blown panic attack.

Her ability to handle these sorts of skirmishes was severely compromised in Afghanistan, and the current sensation, of being hunted, is a bit too close to what she felt in the moments before she was stabbed.

She has to get to Will before she passes out, so she uses what's left of her breath to call out to him.

" _Will!_ " she cries.

She puts her head down, stares at her shoes and tries desperately to push everything out of her mind except how to breathe.

 _Breathe, breathe, breathe._

 _In. Out. Slow. In. Out._

 _Breathe._


	8. Chapter 8

He's standing on his tiptoes, scanning the mob, trying to locate MacKenzie. The hair on the back of his neck stands up when he hears her, the panic evident in her voice.

He whirls around in the general direction of the sound and sees that she's standing in the middle of some 15 reporters, all of them thrusting microphones at her. She's clearly in distress: her head is down, her hands are on her knees and he knows instantly that she's in the middle of a panic attack.

Enraged that these people are acting like a pack of animals, that they're ignoring the fact that she's obviously in trouble, he comes out swinging.

"Move!" he shouts to the people blocking his way as tries to make his way back to her.

There's a row of cameramen between them and he can't find his way through – they're surrounding him, heckling him, making his head ache with their idiotic questions.

"Will – are you and MacKenzie back together?"

"No comment," he barks reflexively, stomping over cables and kicking a portable monitor in his way.

He looks up to gauge the distance between them and sees that MacKenzie has lifted her head and is now desperately scanning the crowd for him.

 _Where are you?!_

As if she'd said it aloud, he calls, "I'm right here, Kenz. I'm coming."

Then, to the people in his way: "Get out of the _way_ , goddammit," he says, shouting above the din, unceremoniously shoving one reporter to the side.

"Get away from her. Move!"

Suddenly, he's right back next to her, grabbing her hand with his own and brandishing his other fist like a weapon, forcing the crowd to step back. He whirls around to do the same to the people behind them, hauling MacKenzie with him as he orders them to back up, back off.

Most of them do, but two reporters stand their ground. Will slings his arm over MacKenzie's shoulders, tucking her safely into his side. Then he marches them straight towards the offending duo who are blocking their way.

"Back off," he growls, his voice low and menacing.

Will's expression, both furious and murderous, automatically makes them take a step back.

Suddenly, Will's handler appears at their side and points them in the direction of the car.

"This way, Mr. McAvoy."

MacKenzie buries her face in Will's side. He's got his arm slung lightly over her head to try to shield her from the microphones while at the same time giving her room to breathe.

She can't see where she's going. She's following along as best she can and her breathing is coming in short, clipped gasps. She's doing her best to focus on Will's warmth, his familiar scent, and the only hope she has of making it out of this mob with dignity intact lies in the nearness of Will, in the ability of his warmth to do what every anxiety medication on the market hasn't been able to do for her during the last six months: calm her down.

Finally, finally, they make it to the car and he helps her in, slamming the door behind them.

She's gulping for air now, crying, and, instinctively, he reaches out and pulls her against him.

"I'm sorry, Will – I'm so sorry," she cries, face buried in his chest. "I should never have come – it's going to be all over the news – I'm so sorry!"

He closes his eyes against the flashbulbs blinding him from outside the car and reflexively tries to soothe her.

"Shhh, it's okay," he murmurs, "It's okay, it's okay."

Still on autopilot, he is seconds away from dropping a kiss into her hair when his psyche goes into overdrive.

 _What the fuck are you **doing**? it screams. Could this be any worse? It was bad enough the first time around – now they've got you on camera hugging the woman who cheated on you! What the fuck is wrong with you?! Get it together, man!_

A moment before his lips touch her hair, he jerks his head up and opens his eyes. The flashbulbs are still popping and he closes his eyes again, exhausted. It's too late. He's already been caught.

Suddenly, it doesn't matter anymore. It isn't up to him. The world will interpret the images of he and MacKenzie huddled together in the back of the car, her face buried in his chest, however they like.

At that moment, he makes a conscious decision to let it go.

This is his life.

 _His_ life.

It doesn't belong to the press, no matter how stupid he looks.

"Are you okay?" he says softly, and she pulls back to look up at him. Her eyes are red-rimmed, her cheeks streaked with tears, and without thinking, he brushes her hair back from her forehead.

"Yes," she says, smiling weakly. "I'm so sorry – " she says again, but stops when he shakes his head.

"Don't. It's not your fault."

 _Of_ course _it's her fault, you jackass! She's the one who came here and now she's made a fool of you - again!_

He pushes those thoughts to the back of his mind and she nods, unsure of what to do next. She's still looking up at him, her neck tilted at an awkward angle, and she knows she should put some distance between them, but she doesn't want to. Not yet. Not until she has to.

Tentatively, slowly, she lays her head down and rests it in the spot on Will McAvoy's chest that used to be hers alone.

He doesn't pull away.


	9. Chapter 9

Both of them are content to let the silence fill the small space between them, using the time to regroup, to try to figure out what comes next.

MacKenzie alternates between luxuriating in Will's warmth and trying not to get her hopes up.

She knows he's still fighting an internal war, one the _other_ Will wins most of the time.

Although his eyes are fixed on the road ahead, he's preoccupied with two things: how right it feels to have this woman tucked into his chest and what the fuck he's going to say to her.

 _What just happened? What am I doing?_

He has five minutes to figure that out.

Five minutes to come up with a plausible explanation for why he asked her back to his hotel.

Five minutes to decide what he's capable of giving her.

 _Am I in or out?_

 _Do I forgive her or not?_

 _Is she even interested in me anymore?_

The problem is that he can't think straight. Not with her head against his chest and not with the domineering part of his psyche setting off all the alarm bells in his head.

 _Jesus Christ. What are you doing, you asshole? She made a fool of you!_

He doesn't know which Will will be in charge when they get to the hotel or which one will win this fight.

Will it be the one who rejected her or the one who wants her back?

 _I don't know. I don't know._

Sighing, he rests his chin lightly on the top of her head.

When she feels him drop a kiss into her hair, she's too stunned to breathe, too stunned to move.

She waits.

Moments later, she feels him rest his palm gently on the crown of her head, and slowly, slowly, slide it down to the nape of her neck.

He's tentative at first but when she doesn't resist, he does it more confidently.

It's something they used to do for each other when they were together before, whenever one of them was stressed or in pain.

Memories come rushing back to her: of carding her fingers through his hair after shows that had gotten away from him.

Of trying to ward off his headaches by settling his head in her lap and massaging his scalp and temples.

He would sigh, gradually relaxing as some of the tension dissipated and when the pain was gone or made more manageable, he'd open his eyes and stare up at her with gratitude. Then he would reach up and pull her face down to press a searing kiss to her lips.

 _Maybe, maybe we have a chance._

 _Oh God, please let us have a chance._

Her stomach drops when they get to the hotel and find that it's surrounded by the paparazzi.

"We should go somewhere else, Will," she says, staring up at him in alarm. "Let's go to my hotel."

"They'll be there, too, Mac." Will tells her.

"Isn't there a back entrance?" Will asks the driver, who confirms that there is.

"Let's go that way, then."

When they arrive, MacKenzie is relieved to see only a dozen or so reporters, compared to the 40 crews she'd seen out front.

"Don't worry, Mac," Will reassured her. I'm not going to let them get to me. I can take whatever they dish out. If they start getting in your face, though, all bets are off," he said.

MacKenzie shakes her head. "Listen, Will - it was bad before because there were so many people around but I think I can handle this motley group. It's important that I try. So if they start giving me a hard time, don't intervene. If I need your help, I'll ask for it."

"OK, you're the boss."

Charlie has gotten a security detail together, which approaches the car.

Will gets out and extends his hand to MacKenzie.

She takes it, gratefully, and starts to move toward the hotel, head held high.

Then the questions begin.

"Will – when did you forgive her?"

MacKenzie quickly looks at Will. Although he doesn't answer right away, she can see from the way his jaw clenches and the veins stick out in his neck that the question has embarrassed him. He feels raw, exposed and angry.

"No comment," he answers, monotone, staring straight ahead.

"MacKenzie – are you still seeing the journalist you were embedded with?"

MacKenzie jerks to a stop and Will looks at her, confusion on his face.

 _What journalist?_

"No," she responds firmly, looking the reporter straight in the eye and silently hoping he gets run over on his way out of the parking garage.

"Really? I talked to him a few minutes ago and that's not what he thinks."

She knows full well the reporter is trying to provoke a response, hoping she will admit it or that Will will punch him in the nose but she is powerless to stop the devastating effects this line of questioning is already having on the man holding her hand. She can almost see the curtains come down over his eyes as he stares at her. The wide-open, loving man from a few moments ago is even now being hidden away.

Will tries to shake it off, to concentrate only on getting them inside the hotel, but the question has its effect and the warmth he felt towards her only moments ago begins to evaporate.

 _She's seeing someone. And she's humiliated me. Again. What the fuck was I thinking?_

He drops her hand.

Desperate to halt the destruction, MacKenzie stops in her tracks and whips out her cell phone.

"Quiet," she says to the reporters. "Don't say anything."

She starts a FaceTime call with George, the reporter she was embedded with. They'd known each other platonically in Peshawar (she was still smarting over her breakup with Will and he was carrying on a long-distance relationship with someone from Leeds). When he'd confessed he'd had a crush on her, they'd dated via Skype for a while, until MacKenzie told him it was no use. She was in love with Will and always would be.

George picks up the call.

"George, did you talk to...," MacKenzie says, shoving the phone in the face of the reporter who asked the question. "...this man a few minutes ago?"

"Whoa, Mac, pull back. Is that the guy from ABC? I can't see -"

She puts the camera to his press pass."...Yes. Rob Thompson from ABC News," she says loudly enough for the other reporters to hear. And record.

Rob looks distinctly uncomfortable.

"George, when Rob asked if we were still seeing each other, what did you tell him?"

"That we broke up."

"Did you record the conversation?"

"Of course. I'm not an idiot, Mac. What's going on? Why are you surrounded by reporters? is everything okay?"

"Everything's fine. Can you message the recording to me right away?"

"Sure - call me later, let me know you're okay."

"I will. Goodbye."

She looks at Will, who is staring at her clinically, dispassionately. The blinds are down.

 _Goddamnit, she seethes internally._

She knows what's going through his mind. Although she had every right to date someone, the mere mention of another man has triggered all Will's insecurities related to her affair with Brian.

She turns to Rob.

"Let me ask you something, Rob - hell - all of you," she says, addressing the crowd. "Your job is to do whatever it takes to get a response out of me - or him," she said, gesturing at Will, "or whomever else you're chasing after on any given day, right? Do you - any of you -" she said, looking at the other reporters - "ever stop to think about the effect you're having on the people you're goading? Oh, I know, you don't give a shit about us but I want you to know that we have actual feelings and that what you say has an effect. So I'm asking you, one journalist to another, to be more responsible. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't appreciate it if the shoe were on the other foot and let me just say, if I ever have the opportunity to test that theory, you can bet your ass I will."

A beat.

Then they start up again.

"Will - when did you forgive her?"

Seething, she shakes her head and follows Will inside. He doesn't look at her.

A cold feeling builds in the pit of her stomach and she knows without a doubt that the next Will she encounters will be the one who ejected her from his life.


	10. Chapter 10

They make it inside the hotel, the doors closing heavily behind them.

Fighting the urge to flee, MacKenzie allows herself to be led to the elevators where the security detail pushes the button for the penthouse suite. Aware of the physical and emotional space between them, she looks early at Will and sees that he is pretending to be deep in thought, looking anywhere but at her.

As they ascend, she tries to keep the rising tide of hysteria in her stomach. Despite several Peabody awards, her absolute competence the newsroom, her ability to survive a war, a stabbing and myriad other mishaps, she's startled to realize that even now, one disapproving look from Will is all it takes to send her equilibrium out the window. She leans heavily against the elevator's mirrored glass, looks down at her shoes and grips the handrails tightly behind her.

The bell rings and the elevator doors open into Will's suite. He motions for MacKenzie to step out first.

"Have a seat - wherever," he says, waving his hand awkwardly around the room. Her mind flashes back to the last time they were in a hotel room together. They'd been in London for work and MacKenzie had thrilled Will by presenting him with tickets to a musical that was only playing in the West End. They'd spent the rest of the next day in bed, only stopping their exploration of each other's bodies long enough to order room service.

She swallows hard, already on the verge of tears. The contrast between then and now is devastating. Before, he would have helped her off with her jacket, settled her on the couch with a glass of her favorite wine, and then gone to prepare her a perfectly temperate bubble bath. He'd have lain his iPod on the bathroom counter, tuned to her favorite songs and she would have sunk into the bath, luxuriating in the music coming through the waterproof speakers he'd purchased just for her, and the knowledge that he was hers alone. He would usually be ensconced in bed when she emerged from bathing (no matter the hour) and he'd welcome her to bed with wide open arms ready to enfold her in his embrace.

Will's thoughts have been travelling along similar lines. He tries to shake them off but the happy memories of past hotel stays assault him: the long hours in bed, completely in tune with one another, the laughter, the teasing, the mutual accord - all the reminders that once upon a time, they were perfectly suited to one another.

 _Why did she have to ruin it? We were so happy together._

His alter ego tries to jump in and tell him he's dead wrong, that _he_ was the only happy one but Will doesn't buy it. He **_knows_** (knew?) what a happy MacKenzie looks like – as surely as he recognizes the melancholy and unhappy one currently seated across the room.

"Can I get you anything to drink?" Will says brusquely as he pulls a Diet Coke from the mini-bar.

"No, thank you," she says.

"Listen, Mac, I'm not sure I can get you out of here in 30 minutes with all the paparazzi hanging around but I'll try to get you out of here as quick as I can."

He sees her wince, but no matter.

He will _not_ be made a fool of again. Well, any more than he has already been today.

She nods and lets the silence fill the space between them.

She can feel him slipping away from her. She'd felt such hope on the car ride over but that now all she feels is despair.

The chasm between them seems to widen with every passing second and she's not sure how the fuck she's going to get across.

There has to be some way to stop the progression.

"Will – what the reporter said – " she begins, but he cuts her off.

"Don't worry about it," he says matter-of-factly. "That's exactly what was supposed to happen."

Dismissing her, he says, "I should call Charlie, ask him how he wants to handle this."

He picks up the phone and turns his back on her.

She studies his hands over his shoulder, watching his fingers press the buttons.

They're trembling.

He's not completely indifferent, then.


	11. Chapter 11

Is it just infatuation for her? A chemical, physical attraction that should be dismissed out-of-hand for its baseness, its disconnection from her intellect? On the contrary, she thinks. It is precisely because their intellectual connection is so powerful that their physical one was – _is_ \- so extraordinary.

She can feel it now, bubbling, shimmering, just below the surface. It's pulling her towards him with ferocious intensity, despite the other Will's attempt to shut it down. It's a current that runs between them, picking up strength at every juncture, every return to the other's end.

 _This_ is what's real.

 _This_ is what keeps her rooted to the spot even now, despite the cold war the reporter's question has ignited between them.

Everything above the surface of their desire is just window dressing.

 _This_ is what exists between them – a symbiosis of love, desire, and intellect.

The body doesn't lie.

She knows from experience that Will – this one and the other one – feels it, too. He's facing her now, and she can see it in the way he just looked at her while she was looking through her purse. She can tell he's only half-paying attention to what Millie is saying, so consumed is he with trying to mask his feelings. She can see that his pupils are dilated and his face is flushed and his feet are pointing directly at her (a tell-tale sign if there ever was one that he is deeply attracted to her – or so she'd read in a magazine on the flight from DC).

She's only been back in Will's orbit for two hours and she already knows that all future attempts to date people who are not Will McAvoy are doomed. She has never for another man what she feels for Will McAvoy, whose company these last two hours has awakened a sense of loss in her that's as deeply felt at this moment as it was on the night he'd ejected her from his life.

She's sure he regrets inviting her back to his hotel (for whatever fucking reason he did so), but she'll take it because he's here and this may be her last chance to get through to him.

Suddenly, a new thought flutters to surface.

 _What the fuck am I going to tell the BBC? A family emergency took me to Chicago where I just happened to run into Will McAvoy…what are the odds?_

It's seven o'clock in the evening London time, so if she can't make it out of town tonight, she figures she has a few hours to come up with some lame-ass excuse about why she has to postpone the interview again.

She brings her attention back to Will, who's put the phone down while he waits for Charlie to get off another call.

As if reading MacKenzie's thoughts, Will asks.

"Do you need to call anyone? The _journalist_?" he says sarcastically, emphasizing the last word.

She pretends not to notice the dig and shakes her head.

He still has no fucking idea what he wants to say to her, but he figures he'll come up with something.

Everything he'd wanted to tell her 15 minutes ago has dried up in light of the revelation about her boyfriend - broken up or not - and now he just wants her gone: out of his hotel room and out of his life.

He doesn't want to think of MacKenzie McHale, with her lilting smile, ever again.

"May I use the bathroom?" she says, interrupting his train of thought. "I'd like to wash my face."

"Sure, it's – "

Then Charlie's on the line, and Will is waving his hand in the general direction of the bathroom.

She makes her way there and closes the door as she hears him say, "Hey Charlie… yeah, we're okay… yeah, she's here, yeah, she's okay. Listen…"

She closes the door behind her, places her palms down on the vanity, looks down and takes a deep breath. When she looks up, she sees her face is red and splotchy and her hair is tangled from being buried under Will's arm. She picks up Will's wooden bristle brush and her eyes fill with tears.

It's the one she'd put in his Christmas stocking four years ago. She'd had it engraved with his initials. It was the one thing of hers he hadn't the heart to throw out. He hadn't remembered she was the one who'd given it to him until after he found out she'd gone to Afghanistan. He didn't know why he kept it.

She takes a deep breath, brushes her hair and splashes water on her face. She notices a sweatshirt hanging on the back of the door. She touches it, then slowly brings her nose to it. It smells like Will. Earthy and sweet.

Then she opens the door, ready to face whatever comes next.

She's here, he's here. The rest is up to him.


	12. Chapter 12

When she returns, she hears Will saying, gruffly, "Charlie, what the fuck was I supposed to say? I know vertigo medicine isn't a great excuse but youtry thinking of something when you can't think straight…"

He looks up as she settles herself in the chair across from him and an expression she doesn't recognize flits across his face.

"Yeah…yeah," he looks away then, and rubs his eyes tiredly. "Okay, yeah … yeah…what?"

His eyes suddenly swing back to her face.

"No. No. _Abso-fucking-lutely not_ ," he says angrily, turning his back on her.

"Just forget it. We'll think of something else. Okay, talk you soon."

He puts down the phone, turns around to face her again.

"Charlie says hello."

She doesn't answer.

He waits a beat.

"He says we should lay low tonight and that he's working on a plan to get us out of here tomorrow morning. I'm working on a plan to get you out of here tonight, though, so don't worry. You won't miss your interview."

He turns away from her then, starts furiously texting someone on his BlackBerry.

That does it. Suddenly, she is absolutely certain this is not going to go her way. He doesn't want her. He'll never give her a chance to fix this. Why is she torturing herself?

She picks up her purse, notebook, and jacket, heads for the elevator and presses the button for the ground floor.

If she can outsmart the Mujahideen in Pakistan, she's pretty sure she can escape the notice of the milk-fed paparazzi in Chicago.

"Hey," he says, hearing the clang of the bell. "Where are you going? Charlie wants us to lay low until we've got another plan."

The tears are already streaming down her face, so she doesn't dare look at him.

"I've got a plan," she says over her shoulder as she steps into the waiting car. "Goodbye, Will."

The doors start to close and he's out of his chair like a shot, striding towards the elevator. He shoves his fist through the rapidly closing doors, forcing them open.

She's still got her back to him but she's leaning on the handrails now, her shoulders shaking with great, heaving sobs.

"MacKenzie," he says gently, putting his hands on her shoulders, and turning her around, fighting the urge to draw her into his arms.

"MacKenzie," he says again. "What's wrong?"

She shakes her head, unwilling to put what she's feeling into words.

Not here – not to _this_ Will.

"MacKenzie, if I've done something to upset you…" he tries again, honestly bewildered.

 _She's dating people, she's obviously over me, she's got an interview in London tomorrow. I'm just trying to fix things so she can get back to her life (ok, and so I can forget her) as quickly as possible._

 _What the fuck is she crying about?_

Her head is still down, so he gently puts his finger under her chin to bring it up, and when he looks into her eyes, his heart fucking stops. Goddammit if she's not giving him the same look she used to give him right before she kissed him.

 _What the actual fuck? You've been dating people! If you were still in love with me there's no way you could even think about dating other people! he thinks angrily to himself, completely forgetting his own track record._

The rage surges through him and he tries to back up into the suite. Before he can, however, the doors clang closed behind him and they are suddenly on their way down.

 _Shit!_

He knows there's a good chance some enterprising paparazzo will have sneaked into the hotel and is, at this very moment, trying to loiter inconspicuously around the elevator entrance, hoping to get a shot of he or MacKenzie, preferably both.

Which means Will cannot let the elevator stop at the ground floor.

 _OK, we'll just stop on another floor. Problem solved._

He goes to press the button for a random floor and is appalled to find that there are only three buttons on the panel: Stop, G, and P.

 _Shit!_

Okay, we'll go back to the penthouse.

He presses P but their descent continues.

"You do know we can't go back up until we go down, don't you?" MacKenzie says, sniffling.

Why yes, he did know that. He just forgot it momentarily. Somehow.

 _Shit!_

On impulse, he presses the emergency stop button and the elevator stops abruptly.

He gives it a moment to reset, then presses P hopefully.

Nothing.

 _Shit!_

"Will," MacKenzie says. "I think only the fire department can save us now."

A disembodied voice floats through the speakers.

"Mr. McAvoy? What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he says tiredly. "We were trying to go back to the penthouse but we kept going down. I thought we could reset the trip by pressing stop and then P."

"Did you say something? I can't hear you unless you press the Talk button next to the speaker."

Will rolls his eyes, presses the Talk button and repeats what he said.

"The car has to complete the journey before you can tell it to go somewhere else," the voice says accusingly.

MacKenzie snickers.

"I'm afraid you'll have to wait for the fire department," the voice continues. "There's a five-alarm fire in Evanston that's keeping them busy, though, so they probably won't be here for a while."

"How long?" he asks wearily.

"30 minutes to an hour - maybe more."

He hangs his head.

"OK, thanks."

Silence.


	13. Chapter 13

MacKenzie slides down the wall to settle into a seated position. Across from her, Will grits his teeth, follows her down and winces as the grab bar digs into his shoulder.

"Shoulder still bothering you?" she asks casually.

"No," he lies.

They sit quietly together, each lost in their own thoughts, oppressed by the events of the day.

MacKenzie is the first to break the silence. She's got a captive audience and she knows it's now or never.

"Will?" she says quietly. "Can we talk?"

"I've got nothing better to do," he says casually. "You gonna tell me the real reason you came here today? Or why you had a full-blown panic attack in a situation you would have laughed at three years ago?"

"The second one's easy," she said simply. "I didn't exactly come back from Afghanistan unscathed."

She hopes he understands where she's going with this because how to explain the PTSD, the fact that the slightest emotional upset can send her into a full-blown panic attack, complete with uncontrollable crying?

"I heard about –" the stabbing, he wants to say, but can't.

"I have PTSD, Will."

His face registers shock, so she quickly tries to make light of it.

"It's no big deal – it just means I don't always know how I'm going to react in any given situation. It usually manifests in long crying jags but – I never really know how it's going to go," she says quietly.

"I'm sorry," he says. "It must have been horrendous for you – "

"I'm fine, Bil – Will. I'd rather not talk about that if you don't mind."

He looks at her thoughtfully for a moment, but she doesn't know what he's thinking.

"OK," he says. "And the answer to the first question?"

"Let's just lay it all on the line, shall we? I broke it off with George (with whom I've only ever had a strictly platonic relationship, by the way) because I am in love with somebody else. I came here to find out if that love is purely one-sided."

He stops listening after the "platonic relationship" part.

 _Does she actually expect him to believe she had a platonic relationship with her boyfriend?_

 _Bullshit._

"Strictly platonic – right."

He knows he is being completely and utterly irrational but he simply cannot abide the thought that she has been dating other men – in any capacity.

"Is that all you have to say?"

"Listen, Mac – If you expect me to believe that you - _**you**_ " he chuckles mirthlessly – "had a platonic relationship with Mr. FaceTime…"

"Why? Because I'm a tramp?"

"What? No! Because – you – you -"

 _Because you're the most sensuous woman I have ever known and there is just no fucking way..._

"Look, I'm just not buying it. Christ, do you think I'm an idiot?"

"Do you really want me to answer that question?"

Nothing.

"Will, did you hear the **_other_** thing I said?"

"Yeah, you said you had a strictly platonic relationship with George. What I **_don't_ **understand is why you think I give a shit."

"Can you please put the _other_ Will on the line?" she says, suddenly exhausted.

"Which Will is that?" he says, with sudden venom. "The pussy? The one you cheated on?"

Ignoring him, she repeats, " _ **Did**_ you hear the other thing I said? The reason I broke up with George?"

"No. I wasn't listening. Sorry - I get a little crazy when I hear about...Never mind. But anyway, why should I give two fucks why you broke up with George? It's nothing to me."

She tries again.

"Is the Will who rescued me from the reporters available?"

"Sorry to disappoint you, Sweetheart, but there's only one Will - there may be a couple hangers-on but I'm the one running the show."

"What about the one who held me in the car?"

 _Christ, she's got a lot of nerve. She wants the one who can't say no to her. The one who will take any amount of bullshit. The one who has no self-respect. Fuck that, Sweetheart. And fuck you._

He turns on her viciously.

"Oh, I get it. You want to speak to the pussy. The one you can manipulate. The one who will believe your lies."

 _Jesus Christ_ , what has _happened_ to you? _Where_ is Will and what have you done with him?

"Do you actually _believe_ any part of the bullshit that's coming out of your mouth right now?" she asks.

 _That's rich. Coming from you._

"What do you want from me, MacKenzie? You waltzed out my life three years ago..."

"You threw me out!" she retorts.

"Yeah - _because you cheated on me!_ " he roars.

The sound is deafening. It explodes out of his throat and ricochets around the elevator. She nearly jumps out of her skin.

All of a sudden it's three years ago and he's as raw and exposed as the night she told him.

"Don't pretend you don't know why I threw you out," he snarls.

He struggles to put a padlock on his feelings, to bury them beneath his customary veneer of contempt but the pain is too sharp and the cut too deep to allow for subterfuge. He ends up revealing far more than he intends.

"Do you think I wanted to throw you out, MacKenzie?" he says angrily, his voice cracking. "Do you think it was easy for me to throw you out? To throw out the future I thought we had together?"

"Billy -"

"Don't," he says, putting his hand out in warning. "Just - don't."

 _Why did you have to come here? To remind me of how much I lost? To rub my nose in it? And then you pretend I had a choice? Don't you dare be glib about this,_ MacKenzie. _Don't you fucking dare._

He's surprised to feel hot tears streaming down his face.

Which only makes him angrier.

He detonates.

 _"Do you have any idea how fucking happy I was when we were together?"_ he screams, his face purple with rage. _"Do you?_ I _loved_ you, MacKenzie. I _loved_ you. More than I've ever loved anyone in my life. But you didn't love me. You could never have done it if you did. You left me no choice but to throw you out. And I have regretted it every second of every day since you left. But I didn't have a choice. You threw it away, MacKenzie and I have to live with it."

"Will," she cries. "I'm so sorry -"

She puts her hands on his back but he angrily shrugs her off.

"Save it."

The rage in his eyes is back and her own anger starts to build.

 _You love me. I love you. Why the fuck do you insist on wallowing in the past when we can fix this?_

"Will," she says firmly. "Look at me. Please - look at me."

Reluctantly, he turns his head and she wipes the tears from his cheeks.

"We can fix this. You know we can."

He shakes his head and looks down at the carpet.

"I can't - MacKenzie. I can't trust you."

He's closed himself off again. When she looks into his eyes, they're cold, dark and contemptuous.

 _It's hopeless. We are not coming back from this. Ever._

And then she's crying and _Jesus Christ, here comes another panic attack. Isn't one per day enough?_

She can't breathe.

"I need to get out of here," she says and struggles to her feet.

"Just settle down - it won't be long now. They're working on it."

"I can't, I can't, I can't," she says. "I have to - get - out - of - here," she gasps.

The fog of his rage clears the instant he sees the panic in her eyes.

She's wildly pressing the Talk button but it's hard and flat instead of raised.

 _Why isn't it working?_

She feels him come up behind her, put his hand gently over hers and guide her index finger to the actual Talk button.

"It's this one, Kenz. Focus on your breathing," he says as calmly as he can, though he's close to hysteria himself. "I'll call down."

 _What the fuck has happened to us? he thinks._

She shoves him away from her as hard as she can, sending him sprawling.

She presses the button once, twice, three times.

No response.

She tries again.

Nothing.

"Please – I need - to - get out of here," she says into the speaker anyway. "Help - me. I can't - breathe."

This has spiralled completely out of control and he has to fix it. Fast.

He gets to his feet, approaches her warily and says as calmly as he can, "They must be on a break, Mac. I'm here, I'll help you. Let me help you."

He reaches for her, tries to draw her against his chest. It had calmed her earlier in the day, right?

"Get away from me, Will -" she chokes out, hitting his chest.

"I _hate_ \- you - you - say - you - love - me - but - you - won't - let - me - fix - it - " she says, with all the venom she can muster given her sputtering voice.

"You're a – - smug - cruel – bas - tard and I _hate_ you! I _hate_ you!" she shrieks and then she's sobbing uncontrollably.

He recoils, horrified, then takes a step toward her.

"Let me help you, Mac. Shhh, shhhh, you're okay, you're okay. I've got you."

He tries to draw her to him again.

"This helped earlier, right?" he repeats. "Let me help you, Mac. Please let me help you."

"No...no…no…" she sobs.

She's hyperventilating now.

She can't breathe.

She hates him.

He hates her.

She can't breathe.

She can't breathe.

She can't breathe.

She doesn't have a choice.

She lets him.

He draws her down into his lap and starts stroking and kissing her hair, trying every calming trick in the book he remembers from their life together.

"Follow me, sweetheart, in...out...in...out...breathe...that's it. You've got this."

"I want - _this_ \- Will," she chokes out.

Tears spring to his eyes but he keeps going, trying to help her focus, trying keep her calm.

Still sobbing, she does her best to mirror his breathing.

Gradually, slowly, she gets her breath back and then she's crying again.

"I - want - _this_ \- Will," she sobs.

"I – want – _this_ – Will."

He has no idea what the fuck has happened to them - or to him - but he knows he is the only one who can fix this.

"I'm here," he murmurs into her ear. "I'm here."


	14. Chapter 14

They focus on their breathing.

His is steady and deliberate, trying to light the way. Hers is shallow and desperate for the first five minutes but as she forces herself to think of nothing – emulate nothing – but his steady intake and outtake of breath, it begins to even out. When it does, she falls back against his chest, shaken and exhausted.

He doesn't alter his routine, keeping his breath slow and steady, constant and reliable – much like the man himself. It's that thought that gives her pause and once again she feels hot tears stinging her eyes. Steadfast, loving, constant, reliable Will. Unchanging, fixed, rigid Will. The aspects of his personality that have been her source of strength are the same characteristics that have torn them apart.

Her thoughts turn to her own part in this debacle; the aspects of her own personality that have led them to this day. Self-absorption and emotional dishonesty, a proclivity for deflection instead of admitting blame, trivializing his pain to avoid admitting her own culpability.

How could she have been so careless with the feelings of a man who feels so deeply? Who loved her with everything he had?

She looks at his face in the mirror facing them. So many more lines than she remembers. How had she not noticed them before? Dozens of new ones, each representing a new hurt. Grief and loss are reflected in the ones under his eyes. Prolonged suffering in the lines in between.

 _I put them there. And I have to make things right._

"Will?"

"Yeah?" he says, looking up at her, staring at her reflection in the mirror.

"I'm sorry I said…" she starts, then stops "…what I said. I don't…hate you. I just – I just want to fix this," she says, looking at him pleadingly. "So badly."

He's silent for long moments, considering his response.

"MacKenzie," he says clearly, wanting to make sure she hears him, wanting to make sure she understands. "It can't be fixed, okay? It just can't. Please - just let it be."

She wrenches her neck around to look at him, disbelieving.

 _He can't mean that, can he? Can he possibly mean that? When there's clearly so much between us, even now?_

He forces himself to look at her, steels himself against the pain in her eyes.

"MacKenzie, I wish you nothing but the very best," he says, his voice cracking. "I mean that sincerely. I know you'll do great things for the BBC and you're going to have a great life."

Her face crumples.

"So this is it, then?" she says, her voice quavering. "We just go our separate ways when they spring us?"

"Yeah..." he says, looking down at the floor. "I think so."

 _To have no hope for reconciliation? To have this be the end? To never see him again?_

"Not even friends?" she whispers.

He raises his eyes to hers again and she sees they're moist with tears.

"I can't, Mac," he says, looking down again. "It just – it hurts too much."

She shakes her head, disbelieving and suddenly furious. "I am _not_ going to let you give up on us again, Will! I'm _not_. There is too much between us to throw it all away. I _know_ you love me," she says between clenched teeth. "What you just said is tantamount to admitting it."

"I love the woman I thought you were," he says slowly.

He has to make her understand that even if he's not foaming-at-the-mouth angry anymore, he does _not_ believe her bullshit.

 _Fuck her if what I'm about to say hurts. The truth hurts._

"I don't love _you_ , Mac…' he says, and sees her eyes fill with tears. "…the person who lied to me for four months, who laughed at me behind my back. The woman I loved doesn't exist; forgive me if it's too fucking painful to be around someone who looks exactly like her."

"You're _wrong_ , you cruel bastard," she says angrily, wiping her eyes. "The woman you loved is right here. Sitting in your lap. Waiting for you to pull your head out of your ass."

She scoots off his legs, sits cross-legged in front of him and grabs his hand, staring him square in the eye. "And I can prove it to you."

He scoffs.

"You had a 94% conviction rate as a prosecutor, which is entirely respectable - but it still means you got 6% of the cases _wrong_."

"Not me," he counters. "The jurors."

She leans back a bit, looks at him appraisingly.

"Are you telling me you've never made a mistake? That you've never misinterpreted anything?"

"Are you insinuating that fucking someone on the side leaves any _room_ for misinterpretation?"

"I'm not disputing the sequence of events. I'm disputing the meaning you've attached to them. You insist I did it _because_ I never loved you, and that is factually incorrect. I did it _when_ I didn't love you."

"I don't get your logic. How does that prove the woman I loved is right here?"

"Listen to me, Will," she says, cupping his face in her hands, willing him to listen.

"If you ever loved me at all, you will listen to me and you will _hear_ what I'm about to say to you. Do you believe that in every situation there's only one truth? If so, who gets to decide? What if they decide wrong?"

"Still not getting it."

"We were two people in the same situation but we each picked a different interpretation."

"Yeah, well, I didn't pick a self-serving one."

"Didn't you?" she says carefully. "You chose interpretations that confirmed your most deeply-held, subconscious beliefs. You decided I never loved you because it confirmed the fear you've had since childhood that no one has ever loved you. And even though there was absolutely no evidence to support it, you went full bore with that interpretation because it felt right. And the reason it felt right is not because it was factually correct but because it was familiar, a story you've been torturing yourself with since you were a child."

She's captured his interest. She can see it. He's looking at her intently, trying to work it out, trying to see if there is any fucking way he can believe her.

 _Don't be so gullible, Will. She's just trying to manipulate you._

Silently telling the other Will to fuck off, he closes his eyes and tries to make room for the other voices in his head.

 _Could what she's saying be true?_

Sensing she might actually be getting through to him, she takes a deep breath and continues.

"Then you took a series of events that took place early in our relationship and extrapolated from them that I can't be trusted, _period_. You made that leap because it's black and white and confirms what you've always felt, deep down inside, which is that you're on your own and you can't trust _anybody_. But what if you were wrong, Will? What if what happened with Brian was an aberration and not the norm?

He blinks, trying to process what she just said. He can feel it, that flicker of hope he had when he saw her in the audience this morning. It's burning brighter and brighter, even if the other Will is trying to trample on it.

She takes his other hand, trying to soothe him, trying to make him understand that he can trust her, that she will not let him down again.

"And then you picked an interpretation that confirmed the _other_ fear you've had since childhood, which is that people hurt you because you deserve it. But what if I hurt you not because you're unworthy of protection but because I was a self-absorbed idiot, incapable of seeing beyond my own insecurities?"

"Billy, listen to me," she says softly. "What if there really is more than one way to interpret a situation? What if our conditioning and insecurities make us pick the interpretation we're the most comfortable with instead of the one that is empirically true? I am asking you to seriously consider the possibility that there is another way to look at what happened. One that will serve you better. One that will let you have the life and the love that we _both_ want."

 _Fuck that._

 _You're asking me to choose an interpretation that lets you off the hook. That invalidates every bit of suffering I've gone through the last three years. You think I had a choice, Mac? You think I wanted to suffer? You think I could just pull any interpretation off the shelf and have it resonate as the truth?_

 _You almost had me, though._

He grabs her hand and moves it away from him.

"Are you seriously trying to make me believe that you can be trusted? That you _love_ me?"

" _God_ , Will, that is exactly what I'm saying! Aside from being incredibly stupid with Brian, what did I _ever_ do that was untrustworthy? Did you trust me professionally? Did you trust me with _every other aspect of your life_? _Yes, you did!_ And I did not let you down."

She shakes her head in exasperation. "As for love, you act like you were the only one who loved. And you are _dead wrong_! From the moment I fell in love with you, I loved you every bit as much as you say you loved me. I was as devoted to you as you were to me. I wanted our life together as much as you did. I wanted to marry you, have a family with you, and grow old with you. I did three things wrong, Will. Why are you letting them outweigh the hundreds of other things I did right?"

" _Three_ things? _Three?_ Try _seventeen!_ " he explodes.

"Seventeen? Where are you getting that number?"

"I counted! It was in the calendar! _Jesus Christ, MacKenzie!_ You fucked him _seventeen_ times while we were together. _Seventeen times._ That's not a drunken lapse. That's not a mistake. That requires planning. That's cold, calculated and fucking heartless! You _knew_ I was in love with you! You _knew_ I thought we were monogamous. You _knew_ I thought we were happy! Yet you did it anyway! Seventeen times!"

"I don't know where the fuck you're getting your numbers but it was _three_ times, Will. _Three_ times. Twice in the second month and once in the third, the last of which was under duress, by the way. Where the fuck did you get "seventeen"?"

"Are you sure you want to have this conversation, Sweetheart? 'Cause it's not going to go your way."

"Bring it."


	15. Chapter 15

He's been clinging to his version of the truth like a drowning man but her staunch denial gives him pause. He sees no doubt in her eyes, no apprehension. In fact, she's looking at him like he's lost his mind.

 _Could she be telling the truth? And if she is, what then? Does it matter if it was three times or seventeen?_

He doesn't have time to decide because they're engaged in a game of brinkmanship that can only end with surrender or destruction. He'll be damned if _he's_ the one who capitulates.

"Save yourself the embarrassment and just admit it, MacKenzie."

"I'm not the one who's going to be embarrassed, Will."

It's not quite sarcastic and not quite sportsmanlike either but he'll take it because the malice is starting to get to him. They used to bicker from morning 'til night but it was foreplay then – never meant to damage.

No matter. The domineering voice in his head compels him to keep going. It's not in his nature to admit defeat.

"The _calendar_ , Mac. The _.dar_. I know every night you spent with that asshole."

"You don't know fuck all, Will. You think I put my dates with Brian in our shared calendar?"

"Not _ours. Mine._ Look…"

He stops, embarrassed, trying to figure out a way to say this without looking like a total idiot.

He shoves his embarrassment to the back of his mind and forces himself to concentrate on the task at hand: winning. Besides, what he's about to say doesn't matter anyway – not now, not when everything about them is past-tense.

He rushes through it, half-hoping she can't make out the words.

"The-first-six-months-we-were-together-I-recorded-every-reason-you-ever-gave-me-for-not-wanting-to-spend-the-night-with-me."

 _What? Why?_

"I don't understand."

He can't look at her but somehow, somehow, he feels compelled to explain.

"I – I wanted to make sure I wasn't pushing you too fast. If I got the feeling one week that four nights together was too much, I dialed it back to two the next."

"Oh, _Will_."

Two things occur to her: he'd wanted her, so badly. And at his core, he was – _is_ \- so deeply insecure. As annoyed as she is at his accusation, her heart aches for him: he's clubbed himself over the head with that number for three years. He's worn it like a hair shirt, used it to paper the walls of his echo chamber, all because it plays into the belief he's carried since childhood, that he has never been good enough.

He sees the emotions play over her face and forces himself to remember the point of this story. He doesn't need her pity.

"Look, it doesn't matter. Seventeen times, MacKenzie. _Seventeen_ times. Bowling, my ass," he says with derision.

That snaps her out of it. _Why does he have to be so goddamned caustic?_

She sighs, tries to keep her temper. "Bowling? What are you talking about?"

"Bowling. You gave me that excuse seventeen times in the first four months we were together. And you stopped making that excuse _at the beginning of the fourth month_. Coincidence? I think not," he says triumphantly.

She's momentarily stunned into silence.

 _This is the evidence you used to convict me? Jesus Christ._

When she responds, it's with cold, clipped fury.

"Is it difficult riding your high horse with your head so far up your ass?"

"Me? Who the fuck goes bowling seventeen times in three months?"

" _I_ did, Will. _I_ did!" she bites out, her voice thin with fury. "And I've got the receipts and the ugly bowling shoes to prove it. You thought - you went through your fucking calendar and decided all the nights I said I was going bowling were really nights I spent with Brian?"

Contrary to what Will believes, her idiotic liaisons with Brian had not been planned. They'd been spur-of-the-moment – the result of a couple of mewling phone calls in the beginning and a threatening one at the end.

She's so angry she's shaking.

"Listen, Perry Mason. It wasn't Brian, it was Marian – _Marian_. From the 23rd floor - remember? She wanted to pick up guys and thought that new bowling alley on West 42nd would be a great place to do it but she didn't want to go alone. It took her two months to get up the courage even to speak to a man but once she did there was no stopping her. I quit going the third time she abandoned me for some low-life. _Which happened. to. be. at. the. end. of. the. third. month._ "

 _Shit._

"How could you convict me on such flimsy evidence, Will? You're a _prosecutor_ – and a _journalist_! Did it ever occur to you to get a second source?"

 _Where do you get off, being self-righteous? Three times or 300 – it doesn't matter. You betrayed me._

"I didn't need one. It was obvious."

She wills herself to speak calmly. "And now that you know you were wrong…?" she says, trying to tread carefully, trying to lead him into a mental space where he can at least entertain the idea that there might be another way to look at what happened.

"It doesn't matter."

 _Okay, then._

"What are you talking about!?" she explodes. "Of _course_ it matters! You made up a story in your head based on something that was factually incorrect and yet you're still clinging to it. Why, Will? _Why?_ "

Her voice breaks and she's perilously close to tears.

 _Because I can't let myself believe you._

"Because I don't believe you."

"What? What don't you believe?"

He tries to dial it back a bit, to get a grip on the compulsion that makes him want to hurt her as badly as she hurt him, but it's all too raw, too close to the surface.

"Anything that comes out of your mouth."

She recoils as if he's just slapped her.

 _Why do I have to keep hurting her? Why can't I just feign indifference?_

"Look," he says, almost apologetically – _almost._ "This day has gotten way out of hand and we've both said some things…"

She shakes her head, unwilling to hear him.

 _I'm just banging my head against the wall here. How much more of his shit am I willing to take?_

She's suddenly keenly aware of how little power she wields to influence him.

 _What was I thinking? It was arrogance and conceit to assume I could knit us back together. I can't do it alone and I can't browbeat him into it. It has to come from him._

She makes a decision then.

She can either fight or float.


	16. Chapter 16

He's more than a little ashamed to see that his barb has found its mark. Still, she rallies long enough to make her point.

"No, Will. You're not going to weasel out of this one. You're going to explain to me why you're still hanging on to an interpretation of our breakup that is not supported by the facts."

Exhausted he says, "Why are you doing this, MacKenzie? Why can't you let it go?"

She rubs her hands tiredly over her eyes.

"Because despite this – this _bullshit_ , we belong together, Will" she chokes out. "Because there's something rare and beautiful between us and I want it back."

"You call what happened today 'rare and beautiful'? I think every member of the American Psychological Association would disagree with you."

"This isn't us, Billy," she says. "All the bullshit we've put each other through today and on that day three years ago is not _us_. It's not the connection we share and it's not who we _are_ to each other."

He knows exactly what she's talking about. And for the first time in three years, he allows – no, is powerless against - letting his conscious mind go there. He tries to reel himself back but it's right there in front of him, shimmering and pulsing below the surface. It's so strong it makes his eyes water and his throat close.

No matter. He will not be taken in.

"That's something a stalker says, MacKenzie."

Tears well in her eyes. Deflated, exhausted and overwhelmed by his capacity for cruelty, she nods.

She's running out of ammunition. She needs to find a way to shut the defensive part of his brain down long enough for him to hear – no, to _feel_ – the truth of what she's saying.

"OK, Will," she says quietly. "I'll make a deal with you. Let me say what I have to say and if it means nothing to you, we'll go our separate ways and … I'll never contact you again."

His eyes swing up to hers. _Is that what I want? To never see her again?_

But he's not there yet. He can only nod.

"Do you remember your birthday three years ago?"

Of course he remembers. But in spite of himself, he wants to hear it from her point of view.

"I took two days off work so I could make you the perfect birthday dinner, Nebraska-style, remember?"

She knows he remembers but they both pretend he doesn't, him serving his alter ego, the one telling him to pretend he remembers nothing positive about their relationship and she serving the voice that hopes to get through to him.

"I spent the entire day in the kitchen and every single thing that could go wrong did. The steak was burnt, the vegetables were undercooked, half the baked potatoes exploded in the oven and the fondant on the cake was in tatters."

"By the time you came home the whole evening was shaping up to be a disaster. There was flour all over the floor, the kitchen was a mess, dinner was ruined and I had fondant stuck in my hair. But you know what you did? You sat down at the table, put your napkin in your lap and proceeded to eat each and every inedible thing I had prepared. Then you plucked a piece of the fondant out of my hair, tasted it, pronounced it delicious and said, with a straight face, that it was the best birthday dinner you'd. ever. had."

Will startles at his own laugh, at the memory of MacKenzie, covered in flour, her face red and her hair streaked with blue fondant.

It feels like this is the first time he's laughed in years.

"And then you started laughing. And then I did. And then we were both laughing so hard we were crying."

She stops, lips trembling.

"Then you put your arm around me and led me to the balcony. We uncorked a fabulous bottle of wine - the only part of the meal I hadn't ruined – and watched the fireworks. And then – even though I was still covered in flour and fondant, you gave me that look – you know the one…"

He finds himself nodding, quickly looking down.

"And you scooped me up and carried me to the bedroom and we had the most amazing, beautiful - - well…you know." she says, a lump in her throat. "It was electric. And when it was all over, you pulled me into your arms and you whispered in my ear, "I love you, Kenz," she gulps, her voice cracking, tears stinging her eyes. "Always and forever."

He remembers.

"You fell asleep and I lay there watching you and listening to you breathe. And this wave of – I don't know how to explain it – this wave of pure love and absolute joy just surged through me. I thought my heart was going to explode out of my chest. I remember thinking, _This is the man I get to spend the rest of my life with. This brilliant, extraordinary, beautiful man. How did I get so lucky?_ "

She forces herself to look at him, willing him to see, willing him to believe how much she loved him then, how much she _still_ loves him.

"I was so in love with you, Will. The day had started out terribly but it ended up being one of the happiest days of my life."

She takes a deep breath, wills herself to continue, even in the face of his inscrutability.

"I'm telling you this story because I believe _that's_ who we are to each other. We're the people laughing in that kitchen. Fighting over a story. Doing our show. Making love over and over and over again. _That's_ what's real – not this."

The domineering voice is telling him not to listen and then it's being drowned out by memories.

Days spent bickering over the rundown. Her voice in his ear. Nights spent working out their frustrations. The sense of utter joy and peace he felt afterwards. Watching her across the newsroom. Fighting the urge to close the distance between them and bury his face in her hair. The sweet scent of her shampoo. Sitting on the couch, reading to her out loud, her head resting in his lap. The way she stood up to him, completely impervious to the grumpy persona that would send everyone else scurrying. How she gave as good as she got. How her eyes would light up when she saw him. Did I imagine that? Laughter, so much laughter, even when they fought. The lightness in his chest, the way the world seemed so much brighter and the colors more vivid when he had his arm around her.

 _Can he believe her? Should he believe her?_


	17. Chapter 17

The weight of Will's decision lies between them but he's sure as fuck not talking, so MacKenzie has no choice but to carry on with her soliloquy.

" _ **This**_ – today – is what happens when we report a story with only half the facts. Garbage in, garbage out, Will."

Her voice is a little less authoritative than she'd like - in fact, it's just this side of imploring – and when she tries to gauge his reaction she's disappointed to discover that although his eyes are on hers (well, not on hers exactly but he is looking in her general direction), his expression suggests nothing like newfound – or rediscovered - devotion.

 _Christ, Will. I'm pouring my heart out here. Why the hell aren't you saying anything?_

He's obviously deep in thought but she's not taking that as a good sign because no good has ever come from letting Will McAvoy think. Making him feel has always paid much bigger dividends, which is why she wants to grab his collar, twist it into two hard knots and kiss the uncertainty right off his face. She'd do it, too, if she thought she could get away with it … or if she had the slightest inkling he'd be receptive.

But she can't get a read on him at all. And it's driving her mad.

What she doesn't know is that Will has been hanging on every word. Asshole Will has even been weighing them: he's taken out his scale, measured the emotional heft of her memories against the ones in his own storehouse, poked them, prodded them, turned them this way and that, all to see if what she's been saying adds up. In the end, her entire monologue gets a resounding, _"Maybe."_

Her Will, though, the one that she wants, is completely sold: _God, Mac. I remember. I remember it all._ He remembers it so well he's still reeling. Every memory that just washed over him is as vivid as the day it was encoded in his brain. What kind of brute force did his frontal cortex have to exert to shove them all so far down into his subconscious that he could forget – for even a second – how good it was between them? He wants her. Past, present and future tense. But he can't say it. That would require some fancy footwork on the other Will's part, a way to square the both of them with yet another cycle of humiliation ( _Will McAvoy Reunites with Cheating Producer_ ).

What's it going to take, Will? asks some annoying little fucker in his head. The elevator starting to move? Then you've got 20 seconds – tops - to say what you're going to say to her.

The problem is that he doesn't know what he's going say to her. He has no problem formulating what he wants to say to her (Don't go, stay with me tonight, come back to ACN, in that order) but that's his hormones talking. He needs to make a rational decision.

He'd been unmoored by her betrayal. And now she's asking him to let her back in, to open himself up to the possibility of another one.

He knows he has to make a choice. And he has to make it before the elevator starts to move. Otherwise, she's heading to London and parts unknown.

Is he in or is he out?

Fuck.

As the silence fills the space between them, she tries to guess at what he's thinking. In the end, she actually comes pretty close:

I don't know. I don't know. I want this. No, you don't. Stop being such a pussy.

As her confidence wanes, she feels the weight of the afternoon - hell, the last three years – settle like a block of cement on her chest. It's been such a long, hard slog. She feels like she's been treading this particular stretch of muddy road for miles – decades even. One foot up, then down, then stuck fast in the mire, other leg up, then down, then stuck in the mire, then it's two fucking hands to lift a leg up and set it down in the mire. Repeat ad nauseam as the losses mount, as they continue to lose ground and precious time. She just wants to grab the nearest branch with both hands, pull herself out of the swamp and vault herself over to Will so she can liberate him from the calcified shell she put him in.

But slowly, gradually, as the seconds tick by, it dawns on her that this can only mean he's about to tell her to fuck off. And since she'd promised to let him go if that was his decision, it means she's actually saying goodbye to him right now. Right this second. He doesn't want her and she's never going to be able to fix this and she's never going to see him again except in the tabloids when he finds someone else to love and to marry. She'll be condemned to a life of misery, bursting into tears and railing against the shortness of everything whenever she hears a song he'd played for her when their life together was about to begin.

Think, MacKenzie, think.

Wait.

She'd read somewhere once that in order for someone to forgive, the evildoer has to redirect the shame of the offense at himself. It requires admitting that although you diminished the other person, you yourself are actually the one who's diminished. It requires showing the other person that you understand the nature of your wrongdoing and the impact it had on them. It requires you to be genuinely sorry.

She's done all that. She _is_ all that.

The one thing she hasn't done is acknowledge that he probably didn't have much of a choice when he'd kicked her out - not given his background - not given the fact that Godzilla Will has always been guarding the door.

It's not that she's trying to manipulate him … _exactly_. It's just that if the Will who loves her is ever going to get his chance to speak, she has to persuade the other Will to lay down his guns – or raise them long enough for her to sneak under an armpit.

And so, despite knowing full well it's idiotic and more than a little desperate, she decides it's time to address the other Will.


	18. Chapter 18

She takes a deep breath, leans forward and takes his hand in hers. He looks at her, eyebrows raised and she can see that he's irritated as hell.

She doesn't know why (it's not like she's been pestering him all day, for Christ's sake) so she tries to brush it off.

She'd have felt a little better if she actually did know why: it's because he needs to think, dammit, and he can't think when she's touching him because it makes him forget everything she's done.

"Humor me, Billy. Which Will am I talking to now? The one who hates me or … ?"

He wants to laugh at her attempt to address his inner child but they've been playing this game for hours so he guesses he'll humor her.

"Neither one of 'us' hates you, MacKenzie. But yeah - he's right here."

"Oh. Has he been here the whole time?"

"Off and on."

 _Shit._

The next thing he says is out of his mouth before he can stop it.

"It's been the other one, mostly."

"Really?" she says, not daring to hope what that might mean. "Oh, that's good … to know. Well, I just wanted to say to the … other Will ... Christ - you know what I mean … that I don't blame you for kicking me out. Your job is to protect … however the fuck many Wills there are … and you made the best decision you could, given … your background and … the information you thought you had at the time."

While her acknowledgment of his predicament is strangely soothing, he can't respond because he still doesn't know _how_.

"I am so sorry for what happened between us. I was stupid and self-absorbed and it was all my fault."

 _You got that right, Sweetheart._

 _Why the fuck isn't he saying anything? Is it because I haven't spelled it out for him? Made a clear proposition? Outlined a way forward? Deep breaths, MacKenzie. Deep breaths._

"Will, I'm telling you all this because I want you back. And I will do whatever it takes to prove to you that you can trust me: couples counseling, individual counseling, group counseling, a public flogging, whatever you need. _Anything_."

She waffles, then stops altogether because despite the fact that she just laid every single one of her crumpled, torn, battered cards on the table, just opened her heart so goddamned wide he could drive a semi through it, he's got nothing to say.

Nothing. Not a nod, not a word, not an acknowledgment of any kind. Nothing.

And that, more than anything else, makes her want to weep.

This is the end. It's all too real now, all too clear.

She gathers her courage, swallows the lump in her throat and forces herself to continue because no matter how badly she wants this, how badly she wants him, it's his choice.

It has to be his choice.

And she has to be willing to let him go.

"But … if that's not what you want… I am hereby letting you go. You don't have to worry about me contacting you again," she says quickly. "Or … as you so elegantly put it, 'acting like a stalker.' I won't."

Then the dam breaks and she's unable to stop the tears.

"If this is the end for us, Will, I want you to know that I will never regret the time we spent together. It was the happiest time in my life. I will always love you and I will always carry you with me. I wish you nothing but the best and … I hope - you - find - someone - who will - love you - as fiercely - as you deserve - to be loved."

"MacKenzie – "

He has no idea what to say after that. He wants to tell her it will never be the end for them and if she seriously thinks he could ever find anyone to replace her she's out of her fucking mind. He's learned that much over the last three years.

What's standing between his mouth and his brain that's keeping him from making that statement?

 _Everything._

At that moment, the disembodied voice asks if they're okay and the elevator starts to carry them down.

Stricken, MacKenzie looks at Will and at the clock over his head. She has two hours to make it back to her hotel and to the airport.

 _Is this the end?_

Then the voice starts asking Will other questions that he's obliged to answer which is seriously cutting into his response time and he's looking at MacKenzie and she's still got tears streaming down her face and then the doors are opening and the fire brigade is saying something to Will and he still hasn't had a chance to respond and out of the corner of her eye MacKenzie notices a tall blonde woman in a red coat heading straight for Will, and then she's leaning in to kiss him on the cheek.

"Hi Sweetheart, I thought you could use my help."

 _Sweetheart?_

"Nina – what are you -"

Then the fire marshal is interrupting him, asking another inane question he's obliged to answer.

While Will is otherwise engaged, the woman extends a hand to MacKenzie, who shakes it reflexively.

"You must be MacKenzie," she says quietly. "I'm Nina, Will's girlfriend. It's a pleasure to finally meet you."


	19. Chapter 19

MacKenzie, struck dumb, looks from Will, who's still talking to the fire marshal, to Nina, who's a study in cool self-possession. A tsunami of grief washes over her and she's marooned on an island in waters made entirely of her own despair. She wishes the floor would open up and swallow her whole.

 _Why didn't he tell me? Was he just trying to see how low I would go? How far I'd prostrate myself?_

Finished with his questioning, Will looks from Nina to MacKenzie.

"You two have met? Listen, Nina, thanks for coming but I think we're okay – Charlie wants us to lay low – "

He stops when he glances at MacKenzie, who's got an expression on her face he doesn't recognize. It's only when her eyes swing up and fully lock on to his that he sees that it's outrage.

"You let me go on – you let me – how could you, Will? How _could_ you?" she chokes out.

"Mac, what are you talking about?"

She shakes her head, unwilling to bare her soul further. Not in front of him, not in front of his girlfriend.

She's trying to stop the tears but it hurts so badly - the entire day – his seemingly endless appetite for cruelty.

And now this.

A girlfriend.

She wishes she'd never come.

She wishes she'd never been born.

She has to get the fuck out of here with whatever scrap of pride he's left her.

 _She has to. She has to. She has to._

She turns on her heel, ready to bolt but Will grabs her hand.

"Mac, where are you going? Come back upstairs. Nina – I'll call you if we need you. Come on, Mac," he says, trying to tug her towards the elevator.

MacKenzie keeps trying to wrench her hand out of his, keeps trying to pull herself back from the brink but it's no use. She's so tired. She hasn't eaten since yesterday. She missed two doses of her medication and she feels utterly helpless, utterly alone. So stupid. She's been so stupid, thinking he would want her back, thinking she could fix this.

Heedless of the 15 or so people in the lobby watching them (at least the paparazzi are still well out of earshot), of his fucking girlfriend watching them, she tries once again to wrench her hand free.

"Let me go, Will. Let me go!"

Her mind is a whirl of incantations:

 _Fuck him and Fuck her and Fuck this whole sordid mess and I need to get out of here and If I don't make my flight I'm going to be stuck in this godforsaken city with Will and his fucking girlfriend, all of us sitting under the same stars. No way. No fucking way._

"MacKenzie. Settle down. What's going on?"

 _No, no, no._

 _I have to get out of here._

 _I have to get out of here._

 _I have to get out of here._

She's sobbing now, completely undone, trying desperately to pull her hand away and it's at that moment that Will realizes something truly awful is happening. MacKenzie is actually losing it. Right here in front of him. Christ, what has happened to her? She used to be invincible and now she's a shell – a frightened rabbit.

She's sinking. She's sinking and he has no fucking idea why.

"MacKenzie –" he says, trying to get her attention, trying to lift her chin up so she'll look him in the eye.

"MacKenzie – look at me. Look at me, Sweetheart. What's going on?"

 _As if he doesn't know. Fuck him. Now he wants to pretend he cares?_

"Let go of me, Will. Let _go_!"

He glances at Nina, who's apparently unfazed by MacKenzie's breakdown. Then it dawns on him.

"Did you tell her we're together?"

Nina doesn't say anything because she's a terrible person. And also because she's dazzled by the spectacle in front of her, by watching this multiple Peabody-award winning producer, this hard-nosed news reporter, this woman who's been able to lead Will McAvoy around by the nose for years - cave in on herself.

"Nina! Goddammit, did you tell her we're together!?"

Nina looks at him, shrugs. Cool as a cucumber.

"What do you call it, Will? We're dating."

"Jesus Christ, Nina. Three dates arranged by my publicist does not a relationship make. MacKenzie, listen to me - Nina and I are not together. Let's go back upstairs."

The "not together" part is an emergency broadcast that cuts right through her own regularly scheduled programming and she stops struggling.

Not together? Who the fuck _is_ she then?

"I don't understand," MacKenzie says.

Nina shrugs but doesn't budge.

"We're not together," Will says again and tries to lead MacKenzie to the elevator but she presses a hand to his chest, stopping him.

"Why would she say she's your girlfriend, Will?"

"Fuck if I know. Don't worry about it."

Well, that was all for nothing, she thinks. Christ, she's spinning out of control. She has to get a grip on herself – somehow.

But not here.

Not with him standing there _still not saying anything_.

"I need to go, Will – my flight."

Christ. He forgot about that. She can't leave. Not after what she told him in the elevator, not after the psychotic break he just witnessed. She needs help and they need to talk.

"Don't go tonight, Mac. Reschedule it – or cancel it. We need to talk."

She shakes her head. She's too exhausted to keep fighting. It's up to him now.

"I'm done talking, Will. You're the one who needs to talk. If you have anything to say to me, you need to say it right now. Otherwise, I'm leaving."

He looks at her, then at the doors out into the street, where the paparazzi are still mingling.

There are 20 feet between where they stand and the exit.

20 feet between the two trajectories of his life.

He knows what this one looks like – cold, and grey and miserable. He knows what the other one looks like, too – the polar opposite of the first.

He can have the one he wants.

All he has to do is believe her version of what transpired between them.

The fact that she's about to walk out of his life again makes his decision for him.

"Okay, Mac," he says, somewhat deflated. "I love you and I want what you want. But I don't have a roadmap for getting there."

It's not the passionate, unwavering declaration she'd hoped for but she'll take it.

"Do you mean it? You want what I want?"

"I do. How do we do it?"

"We just decide to. We need to talk but I need to go. My flight –"

"Don't go. Wait until you've had a chance to recharge. You're fried, MacKenzie. You're one panic attack away from jumping out the window and that will not look good in an interview. Reschedule it – or cancel it."

She knows he's right, that there's little chance she'll do well tomorrow but she has to take that chance.

"I need a job, Will. My health insurance runs out in three months. And, as you can see, I am in desperate need of the mental health benefits."

"I'll put you on my plan."

"Yes, well, I'll definitely need a job to pay for those gold-plated premiums."

"No you won't, Mac, I'll take care of it."

"Will, I can't ask you – "

"It's just temporary, Mac. You'd do the same for me, right?

"Well, yes – but -"

"No 'buts.' I meant what I said, MacKenzie. I love you."

That turns out to be much easier to say that than he ever would have predicted, so he says it again.

"I love you."

All of a sudden he feels a thousand times lighter. Despite the humiliation he's bound to face tomorrow and over the next few weeks until something else captures the attention of the tabloid media, he feels alight with hope and happiness. They're going to fix it and he's going to help her recover and they're going to take care of each other and suddenly he feels like he's got his whole life ahead of him.

 _And all he had to do was decide. How did he not know that?_

"I don't want your pity, Will."

"That's not pity, Mac. That's love."

"OK."

It's settled. He bends down and kisses her on the forehead. And then he's looping his arm over her shoulder, giving Nina a dirty look and leading MacKenzie to the elevator.

The doors close behind them and once again they're alone.


	20. Chapter 20

He's still got his arm around her, still marveling at the day's events, when he glances down and notices just how angular her jaw is. It wasn't like that before - not when they were together. He makes a mental note to keep an eye on her food intake from now on.

"When was the last time you ate?"

"Breakfast yesterday, I think."

"Jesus, Mac. No wonder you're…"

"Crazy?"

"Emotional. Your blood sugar must be through the floor. What do you feel like eating?"

"Soup?"

"Soup's not going to cut it, Mac. You need to eat. Protein and fat. Something more substantial."

The door opens and they're back in his suite. He leads her to the couch, sits down, draws her against him and picks up the phone to order scrambled eggs, bacon, toast and fruit.

 _Shit. My medication._

"Wait – Will, before you order, I need to get my things from the hotel – my prescription. I have to take it with food."

"Did you already check out?"

She nods. "My bags are at the front desk."

"I'll have someone go get them and I'll order the food as soon as I know they're on their way. Do you want to take a bath while we wait? Maybe try to relax a little?'

She nods.

He stands up, grabs a granola bar from the desk and tosses it to her on his way to the bathroom.

"Eat this, will you?"

She nods, grateful. How she's missed basking in the warmth of Will's loving care.

He runs the bath (perfect temperature, as always), lays his iPod on the vanity and sets the speakers on either end of the counter. She's touched to note that they're the same ones from before.

She gets into the bath and feels most of the tension leave her body.

 _Fait accompli._

He loves her and she loves him and they have the whole night to figure out exactly what that's going to look like.

When her bags arrive, Will knocks on the door and nudges them inside.

"Here are your bags, Mac."

She doesn't open her eyes, just lays there peacefully, covered in bubbles.

"Thanks, Billy."

When he sees her emerge from the bathroom, he drops the glass of scotch he's been holding in his hand. Her hair is up, damp tendrils are clinging to her neck and she's wearing only the slip she'd been planning to wear to her interview. He has to make a conscious effort to keep his jaw hinged.

"Sorry," she says shyly, as he quickly tries to clean up the mess. "I must have left my pajamas in the hotel room."

"It's okay – you look –" he gulps. "Dinner's here."

"I'm starving – thank you."

He puts on some music, offers her a glass of wine and tries not to stare as they eat their dinner and catch up on the last three years.

She's not quite ready to get into everything that happened overseas so they tread lightly over that part.

The phone rings, interrupting them.

"It's Charlie" – he mouths.

"Hey Charlie, yeah she's still here. We're just finishing dinner."

"Oh-ho," Charlie crows. "So things must be going well, then."

"Yeah – you could say that."

"Will? Are you trying to tell me that you two are back together?"

"We're working on it."

"Woohoo!" he screams into the phone, forcing Will to jerk his head back.

"Jesus, Charlie. My _ear_."

Across from him, MacKenzie smiles.

"Does that mean you've changed your mind about my suggestion?"

"Thinking about it."

"Well, don't think too long, Will. I don't want to lose her to the BBC. But back to business…"

When he's finished with the call, Will hangs up and turns back to MacKenzie. "Charlie says hello – again. He wants me to fly back tomorrow afternoon."

"Oh. What does that mean for us?"

"Come home with me. We can go back to DC the first long weekend and move you out of your apartment."

"Will, don't you think that's moving awfully fast?"

 _A-ha! I knew she wasn't serious about us._

"Not if you're serious about us, Mac."

"I am serious about us, Will, but what I am supposed to do for work?"

"You shouldn't be working," he says flatly.

"What do you mean?"

He hesitates.

 _Does she really not know how close she is to the deep end?_

"You should be getting help."

"What kind of help? What are you talking about?"

"Mac, I say this as someone who cares about you and as someone who has complete confidence in your innate abilities as an EP but ..."

"Oh, my _innate abilities_. But you think those have been overtaken by my craziness, is that it?"

He holds his hands out, trying to ward off the explosion that's coming.


	21. Chapter 21

"MacKenzie, hear me out. You went through something over there and you need to deal with it. You're still the best EP in the business but you're in no shape to deal with the pressures of a newsroom. Take a few months off – a year – however long you need and talk to someone. I emailed Habib while you were in the bath and he already sent me the names of two trauma specialists who treat PTSD. You can come back to ACN when you're ready."

"I can handle myself professionally just fine, thank you very much!"

"MacKenzie," he says quietly. "You need to think about your reputation."

"You think I'm that unstable?"

"Right now, this minute, I think you are."

She bursts into tears.

He's immediately up and out of his chair and pulling her into his arms.

"Mac, don't cry. It's just a temporary setback. With the right treatment, you'll be back to yourself in no time – Habib said he thought it might take a few months of intensive therapy – a year at the most but you'll come out the other side as good as new. Come home with me, Mac, and let me help you."

She's outraged by his assessment but behind the outrage is a little nagging thought telling her that he may be right.

"And where am I supposed to live during this treatment? How am I supposed to support myself without a job? My savings are nearly depleted, Will."

"You can live with me. Hell, I'll give you a salary."

"For living with you?"

"No, so it won't seem so weird to you. So you'll feel like you're independent."

"But we'll both know I won't be."

"Yes, you will be! You can do whatever the fuck you want with the money. I don't care. I just want you to get well, Mac. Please let me help you."

"You're not trying to help me. You're trying to control me."

She regrets it the second it's out of her mouth. She's just so angry at being reduced to being a dependent. And now she's acting like a child.

"Wow," he says, tears pricking his eyes. "That went off the rails pretty quick."

"Will, I'm sorry – I didn't mean that - I know you're trying to help but I can't be completely dependent on you. I just can't."

"Because you hate being dependent – or because you hate being dependent on me?"

"Will, it has nothing to do with you. I don't want to be dependent on anyone."

"Well, I guess we're kind of at a crossroads here, MacKenzie. I don't know what to do. I want you but I'm getting the distinct impression we don't want the same things."

"Will, you can't be serious. You just lobbed a grenade in the middle of dinner and it's going to take some time to sort it out."

"Do you want this, MacKenzie? Do you even want _me_?" He's staring at her with such vulnerability it breaks her heart.

"What are you talking about? Of course, I want you."

"I'm getting the impression that your version of "want" looks a little different than mine."

"What does yours look like?"

"I want to be with you, MacKenzie. All the time. I want to be able to help you without having to worry that you're going to throw it in my face or try to make it seem like I'm trying to control you. I want you to allow me to – no, I want you to _want_ me to be there for you. I want you to be there for me. When you said you wanted me back, I assumed you meant the way we were before – but maybe I assumed wrong. I know you're struggling but I'm struggling too and I can't live with half-measures, Mac. Not from you. You have your issues and I have mine. And my baggage requires me to know for sure that you and I both want the same thing. And what I want is for you to move in with me."

"Is this a test, Will?"

"Yeah," he says slowly. "I guess it is. Look, Mac. I made a conscious decision two hours ago to believe your version of what happened between us. If I believe that version, then I have to believe you were as in love with me as I was with you. And I was so in love with you that I never wanted to spend another night apart from you ever again. I hope you thought this through, MacKenzie – before you started making your declarations."

She can see the uncertainty in his eyes and the anger, too.

"You're asking me to move in with you and become completely dependent on you."

"Temporarily, yes. Until you get back on your feet. But what you call 'dependence' I call just being in a relationship and supporting each other. Isn't that what people who love each other do? If I was in trouble, I'd hope you'd do the same for me."

"This feels an awful lot like an ultimatum, Will. And I don't like ultimatums."

"And I don't like being jerked around. You either love me and you want to be with me full-time – all the time – for the rest of your life - or you don't. You're either in or you're out. Which is it?"

Is she in? Aside from her mental health issues, can she throw herself wholeheartedly back into their relationship? When she'd first imagined how this might go she thought they'd have a long-distance relationship until they got their bearings, then she'd relocate to New York and then they could see where that took them. But that was never going to be enough for Will, not with his insecurities. She was silly to think that it would. If she wants him, she needs to be willing to commit to him without an escape hatch.

 _Christ, MacKenzie. Why are you being so flighty? You just spent the entire day convincing the man you want him and only him and now you're getting cold feet?_

She casts back to what their life together looked like before. The high of finding a good story and running with it, the endless bickering, the laughter, how solid and right it felt in his arms. Could they still have that if they aren't working together, if she's in therapy all day?

She needs help. She knows it. And he's throwing her a lifeline. Is her ego so fragile that she'll toss it back to him out of spite? She looks up at him and the uncertainty in his eyes breaks her heart all over again. She loves him. And she wants to be with him. With all that that entails.

"I'm in. I'll go home with you."

A smile breaks out on his face that she hasn't seen in years.

She puts down her wine glass, gets up, walks around to his side of the table and holds out her hand.

"I'm tired, Billy. Can we talk more about this tomorrow?"

"Sure – you take the bed and I'll -"

"No. I want you with me. I've missed you so much and now that I've got you back I can't stand to be too far away from you."

"MacKenzie, if I go to bed with you, there is zero chance that I'll be able to keep my hands to myself."

"I don't want you to."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

He gets up, pulls her against him and she places her hands on his chest and slides them down, sending shockwaves through his system. She can feel his heart pounding against her chest as she reaches up, caresses his cheek and then he's leaning down to press their foreheads together. They stand there, swaying, foreheads touching, and she can feel his arousal through his pants.

Then he presses his lips to hers and the connection between them becomes a cataclysm as they explore each other's mouths with their tongues for the first time in three long years. It's languid, fluid, and he starts to lose himself in her, thinking, _God, I love you._

Moments later, she's startled, horrified when she feels his mouth leave her lips. She relaxes when she feels his own brush against the corner of her mouth and then slowly make their way up her flushed cheek to settle in the space just below her ear. He nibbles her earlobe and she moans as she leans her ear into his mouth. She skates her hands over his chest, his back, his sides and finally settles them on his ass. He moans, pressing himself hard against her.

They're both breathing heavily now, and she's startled again when he abandons her ear and heads straight for her mouth, kissing her with force and determination. The voice in his head is telling him to watch out but he counters those thoughts by telling himself it's okay, he can trust this, he can trust her. That exercise is made exponentially easier by the physical sensations that are crowding out all rational thought. She returns his kiss eagerly, thrilled at the sensation of finally, finally having him back in her arms where he belongs. Then his lips are on her neck, sliding down to nip at the soft hollow above her collarbone. He's pressing his pelvis against her, desperate to get as close to her as he can and then his hands are in her hair and he's raining kisses down her neck, nipping at the tender flesh beneath her ear.

He leads her to the bed, gently takes off her slip and panties and then he's just staring down at her, almost in tears. She is so beautiful and he's missed her so much, missed this so much. He caresses every inch of her body and soon she's moaning for him, impatient for him to touch her where she needs to be touched and when he finally does she thinks she will die from pleasure. And then her fingers are in his hair and she's kissing every bit of flesh she can reach and finally when she can stand it no more, she's begging him to finish it, begging him to finish her off. Which he does, perfectly, with such skill and tenderness that she is catapulted over the edge into oblivion.

She resurfaces the moment he follows her over and as she stares into his eyes, feels him shudder and call her name, her breath is caught, astounded, to see how much he loves her even _now_. Despite _everything_.

Tender, loving, vulnerable Will. A heart so fragile he had to protect it with layers and layers of sarcasm but underneath it all, so tender. And so full of love for her. She vows to protect it for as long as she lives.

 _I love you, Will. So much. God, I love you._

As he comes down, he buries his face in her hair, breathes in the sweet scent of her shampoo and feels a lightness he hasn't felt in years. She was right. This is what's real. This is what they _are_ to each other.

And then he's whispering the words she kept close to her heart during those dark days during her long exile in the wilderness.

"I love you, Kenz. Always and forever."

Tears spring to her eyes and she buries her face in his neck.

"I love you, too, Billy. Always and forever."

 ** _[Note: chapters 22 to 34 are at AO3, which is where I now publish stories. I'm unable to paste a complete link, but here's part of the link for chapter 22: archiveofourownDOTorg/works/13199205/chapters/30789678._** ** _The continuation of this story gets a bit darker (and more explicit) in parts, so if that's not your cup of tea, you may want to stick with the ending here. :) Thanks for reading!]_**


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